THE AZALEAS OF NORTH AMERICA 



INTRODUCTION 



The Azaleas, as the term is generally understood, are the 

 deciduous species of the genus Rhododendron, which, as far as 

 concerns the American species, seem well separated from the 

 evergreen Rhododendrons; this explains to some extent the tend- 

 ency of many recent American botanists to consider the two 

 groups generically distinct, but if we take into consideration 

 the Asiatic species, the differences become less pronounced, and 

 therefore it seems better to limit the genus as proposed by 

 Salisbury, D. and G. Don, Maximowicz and most recent authors. 

 In dealing with the American Azaleas we restrict the term to the 

 species of the sections Pentanthera and Rhodora which both 

 belong to the same subgenus and exclude Azaleastrum and 

 Therorhodion, though they, too, have deciduous leaves, but they 

 differ considerably in their inflorescence and are best considered 

 distinct subgenera; they are, moreover, not Azaleas in the usual 

 sense of the word. The subgenus Azaleastrum differs chiefly in 

 its usually one-flowered lateral inflorescences, and Therorhodion 

 in the flowers being borne in terminal racemes at the end of 

 leafy shoots, while in the subgenus Anthodendron to which 

 Pentanthera and Rhodora belong the flowers are borne in leaf- 

 less umbel-like racemes, or rarely solitary, at the end of the 

 shoots of the previous season. I prefer to use the name Antho- 

 dendron first proposed by Reichenbach as a generic name and 

 later used by Endlicher as a subgeneric name instead of Azalea, 

 as it is an older subgeneric name and as, moreover, Azalea of 

 Linnaeus upon which that subgeneric name is based does not 

 belong here but to another genus, as explained on page 116 

 under Anthodendron. 



A short history of the genus, as far as it concerns the American 

 species with which we are dealing, may be given here; more 

 detailed accounts will be found under the different species. The 



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