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Gardeners’ Chronicle, March 5th, 1881. 
Perhaps you may find room for a few more words about Rhododendrons 
before their season is fully upon us. During the past year I have taken every 
opportunity that offered to inspect and to study them, and a few remarks, 
critical and explanatory, may not be unacceptable to some of your readers, who 
have not inspected for themselves. During the above period no species perhaps 
has more excited my admiration than R. Veitchianum, which ought to flourish R. Veitchianum. 
freely wherever Indian Azaleas are grown. The finest plants I have seen are 
at Messrs. Veitch’s. They flowered magnificently last year, and Mr. Minns, the 
foreman in charge, showed me them again the other day, bursting into bloom in 
company with Azaleas, red and white. No lover of Rhododendrons should 
omit a visit, if possible. 
Other nurserymen, however, have plants (I have seen them at Messrs. 
Henderson’s, Mr. Parker’s, at Tooting, and elsewhere), and your issue of last 
week describes a grand specimen of one of the varieties at York, Wherever they 
are to be seen I can only repeat my advice, to go and inspect them. Nothing can 
exceed the purity, the elegance, and the grandeur of the best specimen flowers. 
One variety has the edges crisped (and this I think is the more beautiful) ; the 
other, R. Veitchianum lzevigatum, is smooth, but both are magnificent, and 
bloom when quite small plants. The flowers are three or four times as large as 
those of an Azalea, pure white, scented, graceful, and delicate beyond expression. 
It is no wonder that Messrs. Veitch obtained the highest honours when they 
re-exhibited this beautiful species ; for, strange to say, although exhibited so far 
back as 1857, it had dropped out of British admiration, and was almost 
re-imported from the Continent. , 
The species comes from Moulmein. It is figured in the Botanical 
Magazine, t. 4992, and is there described as bearing flowers, “ full five inches 
across.” 
Its nearest ally is said to be R. formosum, and in this I fully acquiesce. I 
have, moreover, proved that the two will interbreed. On the Continent they 
graft on R. calophyllum, a strong vigorous species, which itself, however, yields 
to none in beauty and fragrance. 
R. Veitchianum comes from Moulmein, and coming from so far south I 
have great hopes that it may prove a link between the Himalayan Rhododendrons 
and those from the Malayan Archipelago, if, indeed, the two are ever to be 
united. I am speaking now horticulturally, and not botanically, and with all 
respect for the views of Mr. C. B. Clarke ; but I trust that gardeners will not yet 
despair of raising hybrids between the two races, although the difficulty seems 
very great. 
R. Veitchianum is, and must remain, a greenhouse species. Allow me to add 
a few words about a hardier and most lovely Rhododendron. 
69 
