The Kalmias 



in Pennsylvania, New York and Canada, and it was in 

 recognition of these services to science that Linnaeus 

 memorialised him when he was naming and classifying 

 American "finds." It was Peter Collinson, however, a 

 Quaker of Hendon, who actually brought the Kalmias 

 into England, our commonest and best-known one 

 Kalmia latifolia, the Mountain Laurel being intro- 

 duced here in 1734, and Kalmia angustifolia the 

 Sheep Laurel two years later. A third species that 

 we grow in our gardens, Kalmia glauca the Pale 

 Laurel was found a little later still in Newfoundland 

 by Sir Joseph Banks, and brought here in 1767. 



The Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia), the 

 " Common Laurel " to an American, is a shrub usually 

 about six to ten feet high, but it may double this 

 height in favourable surroundings. It is beautiful even 

 when growing singly or in a clump in our gardens, 

 with its glossy dark evergreen foliage and its quaint 

 formal pink flowers that have earned it the name of 

 " Calico Bush," but those who have seen it in its 

 native home, massed together over great areas in wood 

 or upon hillside, are enthusiastic in its praises, and 

 speak of it as "a waving sea of beautiful rose-coloured 

 flowers growing so closely together as almost to hide 

 the leaves from view." 



Closer inspection shows that though the leaves 

 are plain ovals rather uninteresting the flowers are 



"3 



