6o PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 
bushy^ is not required. It may be advisable, for the sake of 
balance, to remove here and there straggling branches ; still, 
in a general way. Rhododendrons look best when they are 
allowed to grow to their natural forms. Indian Azaleas 
and some of the greenhouse Rhododendrons are some- 
times trained and pruned to a standard or pyramidal shape, 
and recently the Belgian growers have trained them to a 
screen or fan shape. For this the use of stakes and ties, 
as well as pinching and pruning, must be resorted to. The 
standard Azaleas and Rhododendrons are not difficult to 
make ; nor are the flat-topped, table-like specimens, be- 
loved of the Belgians, the branches of Azaleas generally 
having a tendency to grow horizontally or in tiers, a habit 
that makes the production of pyramids a slow and tedious 
process. At the great exhibitions of thirty or forty years 
ago there were pyramid Azaleas 8 feet high, and painfully 
trained, formal objects they were. Such plants are not 
seen now, but the Belgian growers have revived the art 
of training pyramid Azaleas, and they are likely to become 
fashionable again. In every type of Rhododendron, in- 
cluding the tender and hardy species and hybrids, it is 
a very great gain to the plants if the faded flowers are 
removed before the seed-pods develop. If a plant flowers 
abundantly one season and is afterwards permitted to pro- 
duce seeds, it rarely flowers satisfactorily in the following 
year. 
SEEDS 
Rhododendrons, cultivated as well as wild, seed more 
or less freely. The woody, many-celled capsule contains a 
very large number of small, flattened seeds, the ends pointed 
or tailed. They ripen in about three months, and if gathered 
