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THE NATIONAL NURSERYMA N 
received at cut prices, and more money. In fact, we believe 
that holding up our price was largel}^ instrumental in making 
the past season one of the most satisfactory we have had in 
years. In short, the nurseryman should grow a good tree— 
the orchardist should pay a fair price. We are bitterly 
opposed to slashing prices and believe that careful investiga¬ 
tion on the part of nurserymen will reveal the fact that price 
cutting does not increase the grand total of the plantings 
throughout the country. In fact, we are inclined to believe 
that the orchardist, seeing a slump in fruit tree prices, is 
pretty liable to begin to get nervous and decide to “wait 
awhile,” and therefore, price cutting really restricts the 
market for trees, decreases the demand and hurts everybody. 
Co-operative selling. In aslarge way the nurseryman should 
do more to co-operate with the orchardist in creating a 
market for fruit, popularizing consumption of apples and 
other fruit as staple foods, for as the demand for fruit in¬ 
creases, in the same proportion will the demand for trees 
increase and the nurseryman will greatly profit thereby. 
AZALEAS AT THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
For the decoration of northern gardens there are no more 
beautiful or desirable shrubs than the Azaleas of eastern 
North America. There are seven species of these plants and 
they are now all called Rhododendrons by botanists, and in 
the Arboretum all Azaleas are labeled Rhododendrons. 
The first species to bloom, R. Vaseyi, begins to flower the 
beginning of May and the flowers of the last, R. viscosum, 
can be found here as late as the middle of July, so that the 
Azalea season is a long one. R. Vaseyi is a tall shrub, with 
slender stems and an open irregular habit. In its home, in 
the sheltered valleys of the Blue Ridge in South Carolina, it 
sometimes grows to the height of from fifteen to eighteen 
feet. The flowers are produced before the leaves appear in 
small, compact clusters and are pure pink in color, but occa¬ 
sionally plants are found with nearly white flowers. Al¬ 
though this plant was not discovered until comparatively 
a few years ago, it has been much planted in gardens near 
Boston and it is fast becoming here one of the most popular 
of the early-flowering spring shrubs. With R. Vaseyi the 
Rhodora {R. canadense) flowers. This well known dwarf 
shrub often covers, especially in the north, large areas of 
moist or swampy land with a sheet of bloom. The small 
flowers, however, are of a rather unattractive rose-purple 
color, and the fame of the Rhodora is perhaps due more to 
Emerson’s poem than to its intrinsic beauty. Naturally 
the Rhodora grows from Newfoundland to Pennsylvania and 
New Jersey. 
The next to bloom are the two pink-flowered species, R. 
canescens and R. nudiflorum; the former is a northern and 
the latter a more southern plant and is especially common in 
the Gulf States frorn Florida to eastern Texas. The flowers 
of these plants open before or with the unfolding of the 
leaves and in early spring fill the woods with beauty and 
fragrance. Both species can now be seen in flower on Azalea 
Path, and there is a large mass of Azalea canescens on the 
right-hand side of the Meadow Road in front of the Linden 
Group. 
The Flame-colored Azalea, R. calendulaceum, is the next 
species to flower and is already beginning to open its orange, 
yellow, or reddish flowers which are not fragrant. This 
shrub is an inhabitant of the Appalachian Mountain region 
from Southern New York to Georgia, and is extremely 
abundant on the lower slopes of the high mountains of North 
Carolina and Tennessee. In flower it is the most showy of 
our Azaleas and one of the most beautiful of all flowering 
shrubs. A large mass of this Azalea has been planted on 
the slope below the Azalea Path and occasional large speci¬ 
mens can be seen in the border plantations along some of the 
roads. 
The next species to flower, R. arborescens, is also a native 
of the Appalachian Mountains on which it grows from 
Pennsylvania to Georgia and where- in sheltered valleys it 
sometimes attains the height of fifteen feet or more. The 
flowers, which appear after the leaves are nearly fully grown, 
are white or faintly tinged with rose color and are made 
conspicuous by the long bright red filaments of the stamens. 
The flowers are very fragrant and the young leaves have the 
odor of new mown grass. Less showy in flower than the 
Flame-colored Azalea it is one of the most beautiful of all 
hardy Azaleas. 
The last species to flower, the Clammy Azalea or Swamp 
Honeysuckle, is a common inhabitant of the swamps of the 
eastern states, especially of those in the neighborhood of the 
coast. The rather small flowers are pure white and covered 
with clammy hairs, and the leaves are often of a pale bluish 
color, especially on their lower surface. This plant is valu¬ 
able for the lateness of its flowers which do not open until 
the flowers of most hardy shrubs have passed, and for their 
fragrance. 
These shrubs are all perfectly hardy in eastern Massa¬ 
chusetts and flourish in all exposures and in good garden soil, 
although like all Rhododendrons they cannot be made to 
live in soil strongly impregnated with lime. They are not 
often cultivated because it is not easy to And these plants in 
nurseries, for few nurserymen, especially in the United 
States, care to take the trouble to raise such plants from 
seeds, the only satisfactory way in which they can be propa¬ 
gated. In beauty, constitution and hardiness they are 
superior to the so-called Ghent Azaleas which are hybrids 
between the species from the Caucasus, which is not hardy 
here, and some of the American species. The Ghent Azaleas 
are favorites with European nurserymen who propagate 
them by grafting and they are imported in large numbers 
into this country. Here they grow slowly; many of the 
varieties are not at all hardy and others are liable to lose large 
branches in severe winters. The American species are better 
garden plants here, too, than the yellow-flowered Asiatic 
species, R. japonicum, usually called Azalea mollis in gardens, 
a common Japanese and Korean plant, and the Chinese 
R. sinense or the hybrids of these two species. Azalea mollis 
is hardy and free-flowering but the plants are short-lived in 
this country. The little known R. sinense with its beautiful 
yellow flowers is hardy but the flower-buds have usually 
been killed in each of the two or three winters this plant has 
been exposed here in the open ground. 
