Handbook of Trees of the Nortkeen States and Canada. 309 



Tlie Rose Bay is familiar as a shrub to most 

 people, who never think of it as a tree, but 

 in the Alleghany Mountains, of Tennessee and 

 Xorth and South Carolina, it becomes a bushy 

 round-topped tree, 30 to 40 ft. in height, with 

 crooked and more or less inclined trunk 10 or 

 12 in. in diameter. We see in these individuals 

 the appropriateness of one of its names — 

 Great JUtododendron. It is rare and local, and 

 in shrubby form, in the northern part of its 

 range, only occupying certain cold swamps, but 

 to the southward it becomes abundant, occupy- 

 ing mountain-slopes and intervales alike, and 

 is commonly scattered as an undergrowth 

 tlirough forests among other trees, or in places 

 forming almost impenetrable thickets of con- 

 siderable extent. The beauty of the Rhodo- 

 dendron in flower is scarcely surpassed by any 

 other tree or shrub of the American forests, 

 and one's first visit to its haunts in the flower- 

 ing season is sure to be long remembered. 



The wood is fine-grained and hard, but rather 

 brittle, and irseful in turnery for tool-handles, 

 etc. A cubic foot when absolutely dry weighs 

 .'50.28 Ibs.i 



Leaves oblong-lanceolate, oblanceolate or oblong, 

 4-12 in. lon|?. acute at both ends, revolute in the 

 bad. ferruginous tomento.se at first but at ma- 

 turity lustrous darls green above, paler beneath, 

 thick and stiff. Floircrs (.Tune-.TuIy ) in 16-24- 

 flowered umbels 4-:" in. across, with slender pink 

 I'iscid-pubescent pedicels springing from the axils 

 of the scales of the inflorescence buds ; calyx- 

 lolies oblong, rounded ; corolla campanulate. gib-- 

 bous posteriorly, about 1 in. long, varying from 

 rose-color or purplish to white, cleft to the middle 

 lobes rounded, the upper one yellow spotted in- 

 side. Fruit capsule oblong-ovoid, V2 in. long, 

 glandular-hispid, opening and liberating its seeds 

 in autumn and persisting during the following 

 winter.* 



1. A. W., XII, 284. 



2. For genus see p. 4."»7. 



