Wbt 3Rl)obolienbron ^ocietp ^ote«. 
Gardeners’ Chronicle, January 22nd, 1881. 
I received Focke’s work (Die Pflanzen-Mischlinge) a few days before 
your article on it appeared. 
I quite agree that it is a very important contribution to the literature 
relating to hybridising, and contains evidence of much labour and care, although, 
of course, it has its errors and omissions. 
I naturally turned first to what I may call my own department, viz., 
" Rhododendrons.” There I found a great deal very accurately stated, and it 
is in no spirit of disrespect that I point out two errors or bad guesses which I 
think deserve notice, because they relate to plants commonly grown here and on 
the Continent, and, I may say, general favourites with many of us. I allude to 
“Princess Alice” and “Countess of Haddington.” 
With regard to the former, Focke writes : “ R. formosum. Wall 5 , x 
Edgeworthii, Hook f. , mit schonen weissen Blumen ist R. ‘ Sesterianum,' 
Veitch. ‘Princess Alice’ (Veitch & Sons), ist ahnlich.” 
Now, I have always understood and believed that the true pedigree of 
“ Princess Alice ” is R. ciliatum ? , x Edgeworthii 3 -. The following 
extract from a paper read by Mr. Anderson-Henry in 1867, as President of the 
Botanical Society of Edinburgh (I think reprinted by you at the time), (see 
p. 379, 1867), will, I am sure, interest many of your readers:— 
“ When the lovely and fragrant R. Edgeworthii first bloomed in this country, 
all were eager to see its beauty and perfume transfused into dwarfer and hardier 
forms. Some tried the cross by making Edgeworthii the female or seed-bearer, 
others by making it the male. I tried in both ways ; but for my own part all 
those efforts failed when I attempted the cross on the Edgeworthii. But while 
it would not be brought to bear hybrid seed, I had no great difficulty in effecting 
a cross from its pollen on R. ciliatum, another of Dr. Hooker’s beautiful Sikkim 
species, having all the desirable requisites of hardihood, dwarf habit, and free- 
flowering tendency, and, singularly enough, just as I had obtained and sent off 
blooms of this brood to lay before the Committee of the Horticultural Society 
of London, Messrs. Veitch, of Chelsea, anticipated me in having a plant of this 
identical cross first exhibited before that Committee, which is now well known 
and generally cultivated under the name of Rhododendron ‘ Princess 
Alice.’ ” 
As to “ Countess of Haddington ” x Focke writes ; “ R. formosum. 
Wall ? , x Dalhousi.e, Hook, f. 3 , hat blassroth (R. formosum) angehauchte 
Bliithen die so gross sind wie bei R. Dalhousi^, Botanical Magazine, 
5322. ‘Countess of Haddington’ Hortul. scheint dasselbe zu sein.” 
67 
