Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



Or like an incarnation of pure light. 

 What man can see thee so superbly drest 

 Without a thought of her whom he loves best." 



The Japanese equivalent of this shrub was also 

 introduced A. mollis one of the most lovely de- 

 ciduous shrubs known, whose blossoms range in hue 

 through all the yellows pale primrose to red-orange. 

 Botanists classify the two as varieties of the same 

 species under the name of R. sinense, but in all 

 nurserymen's catalogues they are left distinct. The 

 differences between them are, however, small ; the leaves 

 of R. mollis are only slightly hairy, while those of R. 

 sinense are covered beneath by a dense felting of hairs ; 

 the calyx in the Japanese shrub is as long as the seed- 

 case, that in the Chinese much shorter; the corolla is 

 rounder, fuller and shorter in the first named than in 

 the second. 



Cross-breeding between these two shrubs has given 

 rise to a whole new series of hardy garden Azaleas 

 the mollis-sinensis hybrids and these, like the Ghent 

 Azaleas, found in pre-war days their breeding quarters 

 in Belgium. 



As in the Ghent Azaleas the varieties are in- 

 finite and their description quite outside a short sketch, 

 but the beautiful Anthony Koster, with huge bright 

 yellow clustered blossoms, is one of the best known. 

 In some of the seedlings of R. sinense a strain from 



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