GREAT LAUREL OR ROSE BAY.
Rhododendron maximum, Linn.
Among the Alleghany Mountains, from Virginia south ward, the great laurel rises to a height of forty feet, and interlaces its boughs with those of Fraser's magnolia and the mountain hemlock in the dense forest cover. Thickets of rhododendron trees are common, and though its stature is reduced, it follows the highlands into New York, and is one of the most striking and beautiful shrubs in the Pennsylvania mountains. Scattered and becoming more rare and more stunted, it reaches Lake Erie and on into New Brunswick. The leaves crown each of the stiff branches with an umbrella-like whorl, that stands guard in winter time about a large scaly bud. In spring the scales fall and a cone-like flower cluster rises. Each blossom is white, marked with yellow or orange spots, in the bell-like corolla's throat; or the flowers may be pale rose, with deeper tones in the unopened buds. A great
tree in blossom, with its flower clusters lighting up the umbrella-like whorls of glossy, evergreen leaves, illumi nates the woods, and makes every other tree look common place beside it.
In late summer, green capsules, each with a curving style at the top, cluster where the flowers stood, but these are scarcely ornamental. The evergreen leaves and the buds, full of promise for June blossoming, are the beautiful features of rhododendrons in winter.
The wonderful array of color and profusion of bloom, seen in an exhibit of rhododendrons and azaleas, is the most convincing proof of what crossing and careful selec tion can do in developing races of flowering plants. The ancestry of all these tub-plants is a matter of record, and goes back to a few comparatively insignificant wild species, competing with all the rest of the native flora for a liveli hood.