Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



dendron made a happy entrance into Great Britain, for 

 it is one of the finest species known, and may develop 

 into a tree forty feet high. 



" When this most magnificent of our native shrubs 

 covers whole mountain sides throughout the Alleghany 

 region with bloom, one stands awed in the presence 

 of such overwhelming beauty," says an American writer. 

 " It produces a tall trunk, and towers among the trees ; 

 it spreads its branches far and wide until they interlock 

 and form almost impenetrable thickets, locally called 

 ' hells ' ; it glorifies the loneliest mountain road with 

 superb bouquets of its delicate flowers set among dark 

 glossy foliage scarcely less attractive. The mountain 

 in bloom is worth travelling a thousand miles to see." 



The flowers are pale pink or white, and they add 

 the crowning grace of fragrance to their charms. It 

 has, however, been rather superseded in our gardens by 

 more showy species by hybrid forms in which it 

 claims a share of parentage. 



Still a decade later, a well-known nurseryman of 

 Hackney, Conrad Loddiges, brought into England, 

 probably from South Europe, a great novelty in the 

 Pontic Rhododendron (&. ponticum), a very common 

 native of the part of Armenia known as Pontus, hence 

 its specific name. It was so much appreciated that, 

 by the end of the century, it was described as "now 



become so extremely common " ; indeed to this day its 



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