138 NORTH CAROLINA 



woods were lighted up everywhere with the 

 flame-colored azalea ; and before it was gone, 

 — while it was still at its height, indeed, — 

 the familiar sweet-scented white azalea (^A. 

 viscosa'), the " swamp pink " of my boyhood, 

 came forward to keep it company and lend 

 it contrast. By that time I had seen all the 

 rhododendrons and azaleas mentioned in 

 Chapman's Flora, including A. arborescens, 

 a tardy bloomer, which a botanical collector, 

 with whom I was favored to sj^end a day on 

 the road, pointed out to me in the bud. 



The splendor of A. calendulacea^ as dis- 

 played here, is never to be forgotten ; nor is 

 it to be in the least imagined by those who 

 have seen a few stunted specimens of the 

 plant in northern gardens. The color ranges 

 from light straw-color to the brightest and 

 deepest orange, and the bushes, thousands 

 on thousands, no two of them alike, stand, 

 not in rows or clusters, but broadly spaced, 

 each by itself, throughout the hillside woods. 



They were never out of sight, and I never 

 could have enough of them. Wherever I 

 went, I was always stoj^ping short before one 

 bush and another ; admiring this one for the 

 brilliancy or delicacy of its floral tints, and 



