48 HutTcHINSON—THE MADDENI SERIES OF RHODODENDRON. 
plants are very much alike. Rh. ciliatum is an old-established 
garden plant and Rh. Valentinianum is now also in cultivation 
raised by Mr J. C. Williams at Caerhays from seed of Forrest’s 
collecting. It has not yet flowered. We have promise there- . 
fore of a pair of beautiful horticultural plants representing 
one the Himalayan, the other the West Chinese, evolution of 
the same phylum. Coming from an elevation of 11,000 ft. 
near Tengyueh, Rh. Valentinianum should like Rh, ciliatum be 
a thoroughly hardy plant if grown under right conditions. And 
saying this leads me to add that Kh. ciliatum is commonly re- 
garded as one of the not altogether hardy of the Himalayan 
species or at any rate is supposed to require a sheltered spot 
in the garden. That is not our experience in Edinburgh. 
Certainly if planted out of the wind and where it gets a moderate 
amount of sunshine it forms a larger bush than in more exposed 
situations, but it is then cut back more or less every year and 
soon becomes a sorry spectacle. Here our greatest success with 
it is in positions the opposite of sheltered. We plant it high 
up on the rock garden to fill a shallow col between two mounds. 
There it gets every ray of sunshine available, drops of all the 
rain that falls, a blow from every wind whether a gentle zephyr 
or a gusty gale. It forms a dense carpet about a foot high 
closely leafed to the soil all around the margins so that no wind 
blows through amongst the stems of the mass—this I think 
most important—and is covered in spring with large flowers 
tinted most of them from their opening a deep rose and in a 
degree such as to lead one to believe that the colour given by 
Hooker in his Sikkim Rhododendrons if perhaps ‘ too pyrple’ 
as Clarke * says may be near the predominant shade at higher 
elevations. In sheltered situations here the flowers are usually 
white tinged with rose as descriptions give it ; in the greenhouse 
pure white—all of which modification in tint is consonant with 
the function of the anthocyanin in the corolla acting as a heat 
regulator as it does elsewhere in this genus and in other genera. 
In this exposed situation on our rock garden the plant is not 
cut back. There is no dying back of shoots making gaps in the 
uniform carpet. Our experience with this Rh. ciliatum is re- 
peated in the case of many another evergreen undershrub from 
high altitudes—very markedly in the case of New Zealand 
whipcord Veronicas which in the ordinary mixed garden border 
have their symmetry spoiled by the dying back of individual 
shoots, but exposed to every wind that blows and in full sunshine 
do not or rarely exhibit this defect. Thinking of an explana- 
tion of the phenomenon described, I suggest that it is the wind- 
currents which make the difference. Water does not lie on the 
3 * Hook. f. Fl. Brit. Ind. iii (1882), 470. ” 
