Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL. VIII 
NO. 14 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN. MASS. JULY 7. 1922 
Rhododendron maximum superbum. A plant under this name came 
to the Arboretum a few years ago from a Connecticut nursery. It has 
leaves shaped like those of R. maximum but only six inches long and 
flowers two inches across the expanded corolla; this is deep rose color 
on the margin of the lobes shading to white toward their base and 
marked on the upper lobe by many orange colored spots. This plant 
blooms a few days earlier than R. maximum, and beginning to grow 
usually after the flowers open they are not partly hidden by the young 
branches of the year as are those of R. maximum. It is probably a 
hybrid of R. maximum with one of the hybrids of R. catawhiense. 
The plants raised from this cross by Charles Sander at Holm Lea in 
Brookline are of the general appearance of R. maximum superbum, 
but they have longer and more lustrous leaves pale on the lower sur- 
face, and on some of the plants much larger clusters of handsomer 
flowers. There is an old plant, evidently the same hybrid, in what was 
the garden of Mr. Francis Parkman on the western shore of Jamaica 
Pond and now included in Olmsted Park. This plant has even longer 
leaves than the Sander plant and rather paler-colored flowers. This 
and one or two of the Sander plants are as handsome as any Rhodo- 
dendron with pink or rose-colored flowers which can be grown in this 
climate. They bloom at the same time as the white-flowered hybrid 
of the same parentage which was raised many years ago by Anthony 
Waterer at Knaphill and named by him Wellesley anum for Mr. Hun- 
newelPs estate at Wellesley. This plant has not always proved en- 
tirely hardy in Massachusetts but has now flowered well for several 
years at Holm Lea. These maximum-catawbiense hybrids seem des- 
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