HARDY RHODODENDRONS AND AZALEAS. 



139 



out of doors for several years, through winters of varying degrees 

 of severity, and it has seen twenty-eight degrees of frost ; but 

 though bloom-buds have been formed, they have succumbed, 

 while the plant in its foliage has not suffered. 



Aucklandi appears to be hardy, and some of its hybrids, 

 notably the fine variety called kewense, ought to be in every 

 collection. 



B. Fortunei is possibly the Chinese form of Aucklandi, and I 

 have some interesting hybrids raised by the late Mr. Mangles, of 

 Valewood, Haslemere, between this parent and such hardy hybrid 

 varieties as John Waterer, and with the species Thomsoni. 



Edgcicorihii and Nuttalli have been successfully bloomed out 

 of doors, but I have not yet so grown them. 



Edgeicorthii is a sweet and large white flower, and the parent 

 plant of a numerous and popular class of greenhouse varieties 

 raised by Mr. Isaac Davies, of Ormskirk. 



The hybrid variety called Sesterianum is grown successfully, 

 and has bloomed very well out of doors at Lord Swansea's place, 

 Singleton, near Swansea, where also Edgeworthii grew out for 

 many years. 



It is a fallacy to say Rhododendrons require a peaty soil 

 wherein to flourish ; any fairly moist loam will do so long as 

 there is no lime, which is poison to them. 



They do not like a stiff, dry clay, but I believe they will thrive 

 in any loamy soil in which the top spit is well forked into the 

 ground, and a good admixture is to be found in the dead last 

 season's Bracken Fern, which, if dry and well forked in, will be 

 found very beneficial to the roots, and the stiffer the soil the more 

 advantageous will it be, for it acts mechanically as it were. Each 

 stick or stem of Fern is a little hollow pipe forming a miniature 

 subterranean tunnel, in which the delicate Rhododendron root- 

 lets can travel, and which afterwards, rotting down, affords nutri- 

 ment to the growing root. 



Then the Rhododendrons like to layer down their lowest 

 branches and shade their own roots, and these branches on touch- 

 ing the ground form fresh rootlets, and fresh life is imparted to 

 that part of the plant, so that subdivision by layering is a very 

 easy and successful form of increase. 



If these layers are not removed the plant goes on increasing 

 in diameter, so that one I had measured last week is now 349 



