Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



grows on the banks of rivers and on the hill slopes 

 of Georgia and Carolina. John Bartram, exploring 

 botanically with Sir Joseph Banks's Company in 1774, 

 describes his dramatic discovery of it. He had been 

 passing through a dark wood, and suddenly emerged 

 to face a blaze of colour so vivid in scarlet, orange, 

 gold, flame and cream that for one startled moment he 

 thought the hillside opposite was on fire. Since the 

 flowers appear before the leaves have made much head- 

 way upon the bare branches, the brilliancy of hue is 

 practically undiluted by green, and the popular name, 

 Flame Flower, is most apposite. Botanists call it 

 " calendulaceum " because it is reminiscent of the vivid, 

 if homely, marigold Calendula. From this parent, 

 then, do the flame-coloured Azaleas of our gardens 

 derive their orange and scarlet hues their scale of 

 tints that run the whole gamut of splendour. 



The second, the Swamp Honeysuckle, the Pinxter 

 Flower. R. nudiflorum, has rich pink, slightly scented 

 blossoms in clusters, and flushes woods and hillsides 

 with a rosy hue. It is a bristly, large shrub and its 

 specific name refers to the fact, already mentioned, that 

 its flower buds burst while the branches are still 

 almost bare of leaves. Its common name, Pinxter 

 Flower, was given it by the Dutch colonists because 

 they thought it flowered about Whitsuntide Pinxster 



or Pingster being derived from the German Pfingsten, 



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