HEATH FAMILY. Ericaceae. 



Pinxter Flower A more leafy shrub with branching 

 or wild stem, characterized by its extremely golden 



Honeysuckle yellow-green foliage. The ovate leaf 

 Rhododendron tapers and j s po i n t e d at both ends, the 



ii ndiflorum 



Pale or deep ed S e anc l surface are very slightly hairy. 

 pink The delicate and beautiful flowers are pale 



April-May or deep crimson-pink with the base of the 

 tube a trifle stronger ; the broader corolla lobes do not 

 curve back conspicuously ; the stamens and pistil, all ex- 

 ceedingly prominent, are light crimson. The flow r ers 

 are delicately fragrant, grow in small terminal clusters 

 expanding before or with the leaves, and when fading 

 the corollas slide down the pistils, depend from them a 

 while, and finally drop. The most frequent visitors are 

 the honeybees and moths. 2-6 feet high. In swamps or 

 in shady places, from Me. , south, and west to 111. 



A most beautiful and showy species, 

 Rhododendron entirely southern, but commonly culti- 

 calendulaceum vated. The leaves are hairy and generally 

 Orange=yellow obovate, sometimes with only a few 

 and reddish scattered hairs above. The flower, ex- 

 panding with or before the leaves, has 

 five broad lobes scarcely if at all backward curved ; it is 

 nearly flame color or orange-yellow more or less suffused 

 with pink, has very little or no fragrance, and the outer 

 surface of the tube is slightly fine-hairy and sticky. The 

 ruddy stamens prominent. 4-12 feet high . In dry wood- 

 lands, southern N. Y. and Pa., in the mountains, to Ga. 

 Rhodora A familiar flower of New England and 



Rhododendron one famous in the verses of the poet 

 Rhodora Emerson. The leaves are slightly hairy, 



Light magenta jjg] lt green) ova l or oblong, and rather 

 obtuse ; the color deeper above and paler 

 beneath. The flowers are narrow-lobed, light magenta, 

 and formed somewhat like the honeysuckle, with the up- 

 per lip slightly three-lobed, and the lower in two nearly 

 separate sections ; they grow in thin clusters terminally, 

 and precede the unfolding of the leaves or else expand 

 with them. 1-3 feet high. Wet hillsides and cool bogs. 

 Me., N. Y., N. J., and eastern Pa., in the mountains. 



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