Magenta to Pink 



Woods and hillsides are glowing with fragrant, rosy masses 

 of this lovely azalea, the Pinxter-bloem or Whitsunday flower of 

 the Dutch colonists, long before the seventh Sunday after Easter. 

 Among our earliest exports, this hardy shrub, the swamp azalea, 

 and the superb flame-colored species of the Alleghanies, were 

 sent early in the eighteenth century to the old country, and there 

 crossed with A. Pontica of southern Europe by the Belgian horti- 

 culturalists, to whom we owe the Ghent azaleas, the final triumphs 

 of the hybridizer, that glorify the shrubberies on our own lawns 

 to-day. The azalea became the national flower of Flanders. 

 These hardy species lose their leaves in winter, whereas the hot- 

 house varieties of A. Indica, a native of China and Japan, have 

 thickish leaves, almost if not quite evergreen. A few of the latter 

 stand our northern winters, especially the pure white variety now 

 quite commonly planted in cemetery lots. In that delightfully 

 enthusiastic little book, "The Garden's Story," Mr. Ellwanger 

 says of the Ghent azalea : " In it I find a charm presented by no 

 other flower. Its soft tints of buff, sulphur, and primrose ; its 

 dazzling shades of apricot, salmon, orange, and vermilion are 

 always a fresh revelation of color. They have no parallel among 

 flowers, and exist only in opals, sunset skies, and the flush of 

 autumn woods." Certainly American horticulturalists were not 

 clever in allowing the industry of raising these plants from our 

 native stock to thrive on foreign soil. 



Naturally the azalea's protruding style forms the most con- 

 venient alighting place for the female bee, its chief friend ; and 

 there she leaves a few grains of pollen, brought on her hairy un- 

 derside from another flower, before again dusting herself there as 

 she crawls over the pretty colored anthers on her way to the 

 nectary. Honey produced from azaleas by the hive bee is in 

 bad repute. All too soon after fertilization the now useless co- 

 rolla slides along to the tip of the pistil, where it swings a while 

 before dropping to earth. 



Our beautiful wild honeysuckle, called naked (nudiflora), 

 because very often the flowers appear before the leaves, has a 

 peculiar Japanese grace on that account. Every farmer's boy's 

 mouth waters at sight of the cool, juicy May-apple, the extraor- 

 dinary pulpy growth on this plant and the swamp pink. This 

 excrescence seems to have no other use than that of a gratuitous, 

 harmless gift to the thirsty child, from whom it exacts no reward 

 of carrying seeds to plant distant colonies, as the mandrake's yel- 

 low, tomato-like May-apple does. But let him beware, as he is 

 likely to, of the similar looking, but hollow, stringy apples grow- 

 ing on the bushy Andromeda, which turn black with age. 



From Maine to Florida and westward to Texas, chiefl> near 

 the coast, in low, wet places only need we look for the Swamp 

 Pink or Honeysuckle, White or Clammy Azalea (A. viscosa), 



122 



