GARDEN HYBRIDS 



There exists in gardens, especially in Europe, on the Continent as 

 well as in England, a bewildering variety of Azaleas which are un- 

 doubtedly of hybrid origin; in fact almost all of the so-called hardy 

 Azaleas in cultivation are hybrids, the true species having almost 

 entirely disappeared from gardens. The parentage of most of these 

 forms is so mixed that it is impossible to recognize their origin with 

 certainty, particularly if one is not sure of at least one of the parents. 

 The difficulty is increased, as pointed out before, by the absence of 

 strong morphological characters between the different species of this 

 group, so that it is sometimes difficult to separate even the spontane- 

 ous forms satisfactorily. Many of the older hybrids have been figured, 

 but usually without adequate description and with often vague and 

 indefinite indication of the parentage; and as no herbarium material 

 is available to supplement the illustrations, we have to depend on the 

 figures and the indication of the parentage as given. Some of these 

 older forms may still be in cultivation, and if one were able to observe 

 and compare a large collection of them in cultivation, many of the 

 problems might be solved, though the only sure way to elucidate the 

 origin of these hybrids would be by raising plants from seed of self- 

 fertilized flowers, that is from flowers carefully protected from foreign 

 pollination and fertilized by pollen from the same plant. In some 

 cases it may be necessary to raise more than one generation to arrive 

 at satisfactory results. All I can do here is to assemble the more im- 

 portant literature relating to these hybrids as a basis for further 

 studies. 



It seems rather strange that the first hybrids known to have been 

 raised in this genus are not between species of the Azalea group, but 

 between Azaleas and true Rhododendrons. The very first hybrid 

 which we know is one raised between Rhododendron ponticum and some 

 form of Azalea; it originated at Thompson's Nursery at Mile End near 

 London before 1800 and was figured by Andrews in 1801 as R. ponti- 

 cum var. deciduum. This is possibly the plant distributed afterwards 

 as R. azaleoides by English nurserymen, for in 1811 and 1814 Dumont 

 de Courset describes an identical or very similar form under that 

 name, giving " Hort. lond." as author citation. Similar crosses have 



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