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you look at its stiff, claw-like leaves, you long to hear 

 the music that a good gale would draw from them. 



Kalmia latifolia. (Mountain Laurel. Calico Bush. 

 No. 51.) All over the Ramble you will find this hardy 

 little mountaineer flinging the white light from its pol- 

 ished green leaves, with an almost crystalline brilliance. 

 One particularly fine mass of it banks the northeasterly 

 corner of the Walk which wanders from the northerly 

 side of the slumbrous little pool in the heart of the 

 Ramble. Just where this Walk comes out upon the 

 Cross-walk at the south of the open stretch, bounding 

 the upper part of the Ramble, you will find it, a dozen 

 feet high, shaking its glossy, leathery, dark green leaves 

 over your head and filling your eyes with a blaze of 

 crystal light, if you catch their gloss across the sun. 

 Apollo shoots silver arrows. The mountain laurel gets 

 its generic name, Kalmia, from Peter Kalm, a Swedish 

 naturalist. It is an evergreen densely foliaged shrub, 

 with stiffly bent branches, which, if you meet in the 

 shrub's native environment of deep, dark woods, bar 

 your way with an almost steel-like tenacity. It grows 

 in a roundish, compact form. Its rather elliptical leaves 

 are set alternately on the branches^ are smooth, glossy 

 and leathery, dark green on the uppersides, but light 

 yellow-green beneath. They are pointed at both ends. 

 The glory of the shrub is in June. Come then and 

 behold in silence the wondrous work of Nature in the 

 saucer-shaped corollas, rose flushed with the hues of 

 dawn, that this shrub unfolds to your delighted eyes. 

 Look down into the lovely chalice and follow the wan- 

 derings of that wavy line of rose and faint purple 



