ENUMERATION OF THE SPECIES 93 



suki, Nikko region, alt. 1000-2000 m., May 18, May 25, May 31, 

 October 20, 1914, E. H. Wilson (Nos. 6698, 7683); same region, 

 shores of Lake Chuzenji, November, 1892, C. S. Sargent. 



Cultivated: Hort. T. A. Havemeyer, Glenhead, Long Island, 

 New York, April 23, 1919. 



This species is distributed in Japan from the extreme south of Kyushu through 

 Shikoku and Hondo to the Nikko region and beyond to Adzuma-san in Iwashiro 

 province but is nowhere abundant. I have seen it wild in the Nikko region 

 only and there, near the Hashimoto Tea House and on the mountain behind the 

 Lakeside Hotel at Chuzenji, it is common. It grows chiefly among deciduous trees 

 and shrubs and, flowering early, its pure rose-pink blossoms are conspicuous 

 from a long distance. My first view of it was across a deep ravine and I shall 

 never forget the charm of that splash of lovely color among the leafless plants of a 

 well-wooded steep slope. This Azalea is a large bush or small tree from 2 to 8 m. 

 tall, with a dense crown of twiggy ascending and spreading branches which are 

 arranged partly in verticils and partly in an alternate manner, and are sparsely 

 pilose when young but soon become glabrous; they are red-brown and more or less 

 angular the first year, later terete and gray. The trunk is clothed with pale gray- 

 brown bark. The winter-buds are short or elongated, acute, with shining purplish 

 brown, ciliolate, rather paleaceous scales. The leaves are clustered in a whorl of 5 

 at the end of the branchlet and are deciduous, chartaceous in texture, lustrous 

 green in the summer, changing to rich tints of orange and crimson in the autumn; 

 they are oval to elliptic-lanceolate in shape, from 3 to 6 cm. long and from 1.5 to 3 cm. 

 wide, acute and mucronulate, with a narrowed cuneate base; the margins are ciliate 

 and finely serrulate; they are reticulately veined with the midrib villose on both 

 surfaces, especially along the basal half. The petioles are from 3 to 8 mm. long, 

 usually sparsely bearded and glandular. The flowers are solitary or in pairs at 

 the end of the branchlets, and as the flower-buds expand the bud-scales fall. The 

 corolla is unspotted, bright rose-pink in color, about 4 to 5 cm. in diameter, 

 rotate-campanulate, with spreading, rounded, often emarginate lobes. The pedicels 

 are sparsely or densely glandularly pilose or quite glabrous and from 1 to 1.5 cm. 

 long. The calyx is glabrous, membranous, with 5 triangular or deltoid teeth 

 which are ciliate and from 1 to 5 mm. long. The stamens are unequal, 10 in 

 number, included; the base of the filaments is villose and the anthers are yellow. 

 The pistil slightly overtops the stamens and is glabrous. The fruit is spindle- 

 shaped, swollen about the middle, about 1.5 cm. long and 0.8 cm. wide, verruculose, 

 and subtended by the persistent calyx. 



This lovely plant is very rare in gardens and appears to have been introduced 

 to Europe and America by the Yokohama Nursery Company, who list it under 

 the name of " Azalea quinquefolia pink." It is essentially a woodland species, 

 fond of partial shade. Where it grows at Nikko the soil is volcanic ash and lava 

 overlain with black leaf-mould. I collected seeds in 1914 for the Ar nold Arbo - 

 retum and part of them were distributed. The plants raised in this Arboretum 

 have proved tender and difficult to manage, but older plants given a shady wood- 

 land site would probably thrive here as well as they do on Long Island, New York. 

 In Japan its autumn tints are singularly vivid and beautiful. 



Rhododendron nipponicum Matsumura in Tokyo Bot. Mag. XIII. 

 17 (1899); in Icon. PI. Koisikav. I. 9, t. 5 (1911); Ind. PI. Jap. II. 

 pt. 2, 463 (1912). — Komatsu in Tokyo Bot. Mag. XXXII. [8] (1918). 



