8o PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 



E. Liebig, Seidel, and Rose in Germany, were and are the 

 principal breeders of Azaleas in Europe. The variety 

 amcena was introduced about 1832 by Fortune, who found 

 it in a nursery near Shanghai. It is probably only a garden 

 sport from R. indicum. 



The number of varieties of Indian Azaleas is said to run 

 into thousands. All the modern ones have been raised 

 either in Belgium or Germany, where they are cultivated 

 by the million and exported to almost all parts of the world. 

 Something like two and a half million plants are annually 

 exported from Belgium alone. Some of the best varieties 

 are branch sports. Mr. Louis Sander, of the Bruges 

 Nursery, where 100,000 Azaleas are grafted annually, and 

 many thousands of seedlings raised, informs me that most 

 of the recent novelties have been obtained in this way. 

 If a red variety is crossed with a white, the resultant 

 seedlings are either red, white, or variegated, and it is from 

 those with variegated flowers that the best branch sports are 

 obtained. Probably the most successful of modern Azalea 

 breeders is M. Joseph Vervaene, of Ghent, who is now about 

 eighty years of age. He obtained one of the most beauti- 

 ful Azaleas known, namely, Vervaeniana as a branch sport, 

 from an ugly variegated seedling possessed of three valu- 

 able qualities, viz. perfect shape, earliness, and freedom 

 in growth and flower. The white Vervaeniana alba is a 

 branch sport of the same character. The number of 

 varieties cultivated in the Bruges Nursery is between 

 five and six hundred. A rough calculation of the new 

 seedlings distributed by the leading raisers during the last 

 ten years shows that about a dozen of first-class promise 

 are added every year. The influence of the American 

 market on the trade in Azaleas is revealed in some of the 



