t!Cf)e i^fjobobenbron ^ocietp ^otESi. 
Rh. venustum I do not know as a separate plant, but Nobleanum venustum 
is a plant of character, and also earlier and paler than our other forms of Rh. 
Nobleanum. It is now opening, and I will try to send you a flower next week. 
The only Rh. Jacksoni that I know is the form that Smith, of Darley Dale, 
sells, it is sprawling, but flowers in late April or early May. 
The darkest form of Rh. Nobleanum (it is not Nobleanum, I am told), is 
known as Altaclarense. This too. Smith had ; it is a long way from a blood-red, 
but brighter than the usual Nobleanum, still near enough to be grouped with 
if for a layman. This may be the Jacksoni ‘‘ Crimson Scarlet,” sold by Smith, 
of Darley. 
Loudon, Vol. IT, 1136, says that Nobleanum is a caucasicum hybrid. In 
Vol. IV., I see Altaclarense listed by Richard Forrest, of Kennington, at 21/-, 
and venustum, by Lawson & Sons, of Edinburgh, at 30 /-, and I believe that they 
were the best forms that came out of the cross. 
P. D. WILLIAMS. 
A Letter from Professor Bayley Balfour to Mr. C. C. Eley, 
dated January \^th, 1917. 
Dear Mr. Eley, —It always gives me pleasure to have letters from you 
about plants. If I help you by giving such information as I can, I too, benefit 
by information which you give to me, and by having to bring to focus derelict 
facts. Moreover, I am kept humble by finding there is so much to learn, even 
about groups to which I have given special study for some years. 
The Rhododendron truss arrived to-day. Rh. venustum, D. Don is a hybrid 
(caucasicum X arboreum), raised by Mr. Wm. Smith; in 1829 (see Sweet’s 
Brit. El. Card., ser. 2, III., 1835, 285). The original description makes it a 
dwarf shrub, not exceeding 8 inches in height. Nothing is said about the 
CAUCASICUM used, and as you know the caucasicum (seed parent) of Nobleanum 
and the early crosses was a yellow caucasicum and, therefore, not caucasicum, 
but a hybrid probably caucasicum x chrysanthum. The figure in “ Sweet ” 
recalls our true Jacksoni, but the flower is paler. 
Nobleanum is as you know a hybrid (yellow caucasicum x red 
arboreum). 
The name Nobleanum venustum has not come my way before, but I need 
not discuss it as a whole or in its halves, because Mr. P. D. Williams’ 
Rhododendron has nothing to do with either Nobleanum or venustum. 
It is one of the crowd of hybrids (catawbiense x arboreum), which were 
raised in the twenties, thirties and forties of last century, before the Sikkim flood. 
ARBOREUM is Said to have come in about 1818, and every gardener in the country 
fell victim to the temptation of using it as a pollen parent for hybrids. Some 
have survived, e.g., Russellianum ; most have disappeared under their first 
names, reappearing some of them under new names through subsequent raisers. 
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