Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



thick in texture with dark glossy-green surface and 

 paler backs, and black hairs are dotted about them. 

 The flowers come out in March and April and are set 

 some twenty or thirty together, in rather stiff, erect 

 spikes at the end of the branches. It is a shrub that 

 is neat and compact in growth, an evergreen bush that 

 may grow to the height of a man, and be even double 

 that in width. 



Pieris (or Andromeda} japonica is still more 

 beautiful, but the value of its greater beauty is some- 

 what discounted by its lesser hardiness. The spikes, 

 four or five inches long, of pure white blossoms droop 

 gracefully instead of being held stiffly erect, and the 

 individual blossoms are larger. They are produced 

 at the ends of the branches, and when the shrub is at 

 its best they cover the shining dark foliage as with a 

 snowy mantle. It is, as its name implies, a Japanese 

 shrub. 



The third species of Pieris that we find in our 

 gardens is P. formosa (or A. formosa), from the 

 Himalayas. This is perhaps most beautiful of all, and 

 as it flowers a little later May instead of March and 

 April it is less likely to be cut by frosty nights. 

 The flower spikes are often half a foot long, and they 

 appear, a dozen to twenty together, on the end of the 

 previous year's growth, each carrying about a dozen 

 bells. In the spring this shrub, growing in a sheltered 



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