Magenta to Pink 



Mountain or American Laurel; Calico Bush; 

 Spoonwood ; Calmoun ; Broad-leaved 

 Kalmia 



{Kalmia latifolid) Heath family 



Flowers — Buds and new flowers bright rose pink, afterward fad- 

 ing white, and only lined with pink, i in. across, or less, 

 numerous, in terminal clusters. Calyx small, -^-parted, sticky ; 

 corolla like a s-pointed saucer, with lo projections on outside ; 

 lo arching stamens, an anther lodged in each projection ; i 

 pistil. Stem: Shrubby, woody, stiffly branched, 2 to 20 

 ft. high. Leaves : Evergreen, entire, oval to elliptic, pointed 

 at both ends, tapering into petioles. Fruit: Around, brown 

 capsule, with the style long remaining on it. 



Preferred Habitat— Scindy or rocky woods, especially in hilly or 

 mountainous country. 



Flowering Season — May — June. 



Distribution — New Brunswick and Ontario, southward to the Gulf 

 of Mexico, and westward to Ohio. 



It would be well if Americans, imitating thejapanese in mak- 

 ing pilgrimages to scenes of supreme natural beauty, visited the 

 mountains, rocky, woody hillsides, ravines, and tree-girt up- 

 lands when the laurel is in its glory ; when masses of its pink and 

 white blossoms, set among the dark evergreen leaves, flush the 

 landscape like Aurora, and are reflected from the pools of streams 

 and the serene depths of mountain lakes. Peter Kalm, a Swedish 

 pupil of Linnaeus, who travelled here early in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, was more impressed by its beauty than that of any other 

 flower. He introduced the plant to Europe, where it is known 

 as kalmia, and extensively cultivated on fine estates that are 

 thrown open to the public during the flowering season. Even a 

 flower is not without honor, save in its own country. We have 

 only to prepare a border of leaf-mould, take up the young plant 

 without injuring the roots or allowing them to dry, hurry them 

 into the ground, and prune back the bush a little, to establish it in 

 our gardens, where it willbloom freely after the second year. 



All the kalmias resort to a most ingenious device for com- 

 pelling insect visitors to carry their pollen from blossom to blos- 

 som. A newly opened flower has its stigma erected where the 

 incoming bee must leave on its sticky surface the four minute 

 orange-like grains carried from the anther of another flower on 

 the hairy underside of her body. Now, each anther is tucked 

 away in one of the ten little pockets of the saucer-shaped blossom, 

 and the elastic filaments are strained upward like a bow. Aftei 

 hovering above the nectary, the bee has only to descend toward 



125 



