DISTRIBUTION 13 



solemn depths with its snow-white, almost bell-shaped flowers. Crown- 

 ing a knoll among mixed trees round the Hashimoto Tea House at 

 Chuzenji and high up on the steep, wooded slope behind the Lakeside 

 Hotel near the same place R. pentaphyllum is common, and I shall 

 never forget the day in June, 1914, when I first beheld these bushes 

 covered with masses of bright rose-pink blossoms. These two may- 

 be classed as small trees and among the Azaleas of eastern Asia are 

 only approached in size by the pink-flowered R. Schlipperibachii. 



R. Tschonoskii has the smallest flowers of any species of Azalea and, 

 indeed, in this respect is only approached by the Chinese R. Seniavinii. 

 But in size of plant the real dwarf species is R. serpyllifolium, which is 

 common in the Idzu province, and is also known from Mt. Unzen 

 near Nagasaki, and from Okinawa in the Liukiu Archipelago. Yet 

 individual plants of R. obtusum f . japonicum at alpine limits of vege- 

 tation are equally dwarf. 



By the sides of rock-strewn torrents high up on mountains on 

 Yaku-shima Island R. indicum, the first-known of all Asiatic Azaleas, 

 forms dense thickets more than a metre high, but in the gardens of 

 Japan it is a dwarf and hugs the ground closely. The lovely R. mu- 

 cronatum with its pure white, fragrant flowers has not been found wild 

 though its pale purple-flowered variety ripense is common by the sides 

 of certain rivers in the island of Shikoku. The pink to rose-colored 

 R. linearifolium var. macrosepalum with sticky leaves and flower-buds 

 and an extraordinarily variable and glandular calyx is abundant in 

 thin Pine-woods and among scrub round Futagawa, Yoshino and 

 near Osaka. Very remarkable is the distribution of the red-flowered 

 R. Weyrichii, which is known only from parts of Shikoku in the east, 

 from the Goto Islands in the Japan Sea, and from the island of Quel- 

 paert off the south of Korea. The small-leafed R. tosaense is confined 

 to parts of the island of Shikoku, and R. Schlipperibachii, which is 

 really a Korean species, grows sparingly on Chokai-san and one or two 

 other mountains in northern Hondo. The slender-branched R. Al- 

 brechtii grows in thickets and on the margins of forests from the Nikko 

 region northward to central Hokkaido, but is nowhere really common. 

 On the foot-hills of Adzuma-yama the remarkable R. nipponicum, with 

 its campanulate white corolla, shreddy, cinnamon-brown bark and 

 fragile fruit, is common in open grass and scrub-clad country, but is 

 not known elsewhere. On Mt. Kirishima in Kyushu R. obtuswm 

 f. japonicum grows under alpine conditions, but the most truly alpine 

 species of east Asiatic Azaleas is R. Tschonoskii, widespread in Japan 



