8o PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 
E. Liebig, Seidel, and Rose in Germany, were and are the 
principal breeders of Azaleas in Europe. The variety 
amoena was introduced about 1832 by Fortune, who found 
it in a nursery near Shanghai. It is probably only a garden 
sport from R. indicum. 
The number of varieties of Indian Azaleas is said to run 
into thousands. All the modern ones have been raised 
either in Belgium or Germany, where they are cultivated 
by the million and exported to almost all parts of the world. 
Something like two and a half million plants are annually 
exported from Belgium alone. Some of the best varieties 
are branch sports. Mr. Louis Sander, of the Bruges 
Nursery, where 100,000 Azaleas are grafted annually, and 
many thousands of seedlings raised, informs me that most 
of the recent novelties have been obtained in this way. 
If a red variety is crossed with a white, the resultant 
seedlings are either red, white, or variegated, and it is from 
those with variegated flowers that the best branch sports are 
obtained. Probably the most successful of modern Azalea 
breeders is M. Joseph Vervaene, of Ghent, who is now about 
eighty years of age. He obtained one of the most beauti- 
ful Azaleas known, namely, Vervaeniana as a branch sport, 
from an ugly variegated seedling possessed of three valu- 
able qualities, viz. — perfect shape, earliness, and freedom 
in growth and flower. The white Vervaeniana alba is a 
branch sport of the same character. The number of 
varieties cultivated in the Bruges Nursery is between 
five and six hundred. A rough calculation of the new 
seedlings distributed by the leading raisers during the last 
ten years shows that about a dozen of first-class promise 
are added every year. The influence of the American 
market on the trade in Azaleas is revealed in some of the 
