MY SHRUBS 99 
Here, where I dwell on a limestone crag, the Rhododendron 
demands peat, and if the peat bed be lifted up above the limestone, 
instead of buried in it, so much the better. Peat graves with 
walls of the local soil are dangerous. It is wiser to make peat 
mounds into which the lime cannot percolate during the rainy 
seasons. 
I have some fifty rhododendrons, and my favourite plant of 
all the garden is R. campylocarpum. From an elevation of 14,000 
feet on the Sikkim Himalaya comes this precious shrub. It stands 
7 feet high, and in early May the bud breaks a rich orange-red and 
opens into clusters of loose, butter-coloured bells of wax-like 
substance and most perfect shape, with a splash of dark ruby at 
the bottom of each cup. It is a generous flowerer, and not seldom 
I disbud in autumn, and reduce its promise by a hundred points 
for the sake of the plant. I would travel to the Sikkim, and even 
climb 14,000 feet, to see R. campylocarpum spreading its pale lemon 
light under the mountain mists of that wondrous region. There 
is a hybrid between R. campylocarpum and that good rhododendron 
“Prince C. de Rohan,” which is a mixture of yellow and pink, 
with the habit of the former plant. This is but an infant with me, 
and has yet to blossom. 
R. cinnabarinum hangs out blossoms of hot, cinnabar red, and its 
young foliage reveals a delicious, glaucous duck-green. R. Roylet 
and R. blandfordizflorum are near it, the former with most dis- 
tinguished plum-coloured little trusses brushed with delicate 
bloom ; and that exceedingly splendid plant, R. Thomsonit, is even 
more striking in the same style. R. Griffithtianum (Syn. Auck- 
landii) is the superb parent of many great hybrids, including “‘ Pink 
Pearl,” Manglesii and its fine forms “ White Pearl” and Gaunt- 
