388 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
point, reflex and ciliate on the margin, smooth and sometimes 
shining above, with the mid-rib bristling beneath and tapering 
at base to a short stalk. 
The flowers are six to twelve, in a diverging whorl or termi- 
nal corymb, their stems, when few, issuing from nearly the 
same point. At the foot of each green or colored flower-stem, 
are a white, hollow, obovate, bract-like scale, nearly as long 
as the stem, and one or two fugacious, thread-like bracts, much 
shorter. The stem and flower are covered with glandular, 
sometimes glutinous hairs. The calyx is usually short, with 
five rounded or pointed, ciliate or hairy teeth. The corolla is a 
white or scarlet, oblique tube, set with brownish, viscous hairs, 
and expanding into five unequal, reflexed, pink segments, of a 
pure white, or sometimes with a tint of flesh color within. 
‘Three or four stamens are usually longer, and one or two shorter 
than the corolla, with scarlet threads, downy below and smooth 
above, bending upwards and supporting a light, rust-colored, 
linear anther, opening obliquely at the extremity by two round 
pores. ‘The ovary, at flowering, is a five-sided pyramid. The 
style is scarlet, slightly hairy, a little longer than the stamen, 
with a capitate stigma. The fruit, which often remains on the 
stem till the flowers of the succeeding season appear, is a dry, 
five-celled, many-seeded capsule, with valves opening from the 
centre and top, and having the persistent, sickle-shaped style 
at the end of the central axis. 
There are many permanent varieties of this plant in its native 
state, differing mm the color and viscidness of the flowers, the 
shape of the calyx-segments, and the color of the leaves. The 
most marked are 
Var. |.—Glaucum of Pursh, in which the leaves are green 
above and glaucous beneath. 
Var. 2.—Leaves pale above and glaucous beneath, with the 
teeth of the calyx long, spatulate and reflexed. 
Var. 3.—Leaves glaucous on both surfaces and with later 
flowers. 
Few flower plants have been more valued and cultivated in 
European gardens than this. None more readily hybridizes 
with the other rhododendrons and azaleas. In Loddige’s Cata- 
