_Rhododendron maximum_
_Flowers_--Rose pink, varying to white, greenish in the throat, spotted
with yellow or orange, in broad clusters set like a bouquet among
leaves, and developed from scaly, cone-like buds; pedicels sticky-hairy.
Calyx 5-parted minute; corolla 5-lobed, broadly bell-shaped, 2 in. broad
or less; usually 10 stamens, equally spreading; 1 pistil. _Stem:_
Sometimes a tree attaining a height of 40 ft., usually 6 to 20 ft.,
shrubby, woody. _Leaves:_ Evergreen, drooping in winter, leathery, dark
green on both sides, lance-oblong, 4 to 10 in. long, entire edged,
narrowing into stout petioles.
_Preferred Habitat_--Mountainous woodland, hillsides near streams.
_Flowering Season_--June-July.
_Distribution_--Uncommon from Ohio and New England to Nova Scotia;
abundant through the Alleghanies to Georgia.
When this most magnificent of our native shrubs covers whole
mountainsides throughout the Alleghany region with bloom, one stands
awed in the presence of such overwhelming beauty. Nowhere else does
the rhododendron attain such size or luxuriance. There it produces a
tall trunk, and towers among the trees; it spreads its branches far
and wide until they interlock and form almost impenetrable thickets
locally called “hells” where pioneer explorers wandered, lost
themselves and perished; it glorifies the loneliest mountain road with
superb bouquets of its delicate flowers set among dark, glossy foliage
scarcely less attractive. The mountain in bloom is worth travelling a
thousand miles to see.
Rhododendrons, azaleas, and laurels fall under a common ban pronounced
by bee-keepers. The bees which transfer pollen from blossom to blossom
while gathering nectar, manufacture honey said to be poisonous. Cattle
know enough to let all this foliage alone. Apparently the ants fear no
more evil results from the nectar than the bees themselves; and were it
not for the sticky parts nearest the flowers, on which they crawl to
meet their death, the blossom’s true benefactors would find little
refreshment left.
Mountain or American Laurel; Calico Bush; Spoonwood; Calmoun;
Broad-leaved Kalmia
_Kalmia latifolia_
_Flowers_--Buds and new flowers bright rose pink, afterward fading
white, and only lined with pink, 1 in. across or less, numerous, in
terminal clusters. Calyx small, 5-parted, sticky; corolla like a
5-pointed saucer, with 10 projections on outside; 10 arching stamens, an
anther lodged in each projection; 1 pistil. _Stem:_ Shrubby, woody,
stiffly branched, 2 to 20 ft. high. _Leaves:_ Evergreen, entire, oval to
elliptic, pointed at both ends, tapering into petioles. _Fruit:_ A
round, brown capsule, with the style long remaining on it.
_Preferred Habitat_--Sandy or rocky woods, especially in hilly or
mountainous country.
_Flowering Season_--May-June.
_Distribution_--New Brunswick and Ontario, southward to the Gulf of
Mexico, and westward to Ohio.
It would be well if Americans, imitating the Japanese in making
pilgrimages to scenes of supreme natural beauty, visited the mountains,
rocky, woody hillsides, ravines, and tree-girt uplands when the laurel
is in its glory; when masses of its pink and white blossoms, set among
the dark evergreen leaves, flush the landscape like Aurora, and are
reflected from the pools of streams and the serene depths of mountain
lakes. Peter Kalm, a Swedish pupil of Linnaeus, who travelled here early
in the eighteenth century, was more impressed by its beauty than that of
any other flower. He introduced the plant to Europe, where it is known
as kalmia, and extensively cultivated on fine estates that are thrown
open to the public during the flowering season. Even a flower is not
without honor, save in its own country. We have only to prepare a border
of leaf mould, take up the young plant without injuring the roots or
allowing them to dry, hurry them into the ground, and prune back the
bush a little, to establish it in our gardens, where it will bloom
freely after the second year. Lime in the soil and manure are fatal to
it as well as to rhododendrons and azaleas. All they require is a mulch
of leaves kept on winter and summer that their fine fibrous roots may
never dry out.
All the kalmias resort to a most ingenious device for compelling insect
visitors to carry their pollen from blossom to blossom. A newly-opened
flower has its stigma erected where the incoming bee must leave on its
sticky surface the four minute orange-like grains carried from the
anther of another flower on the hairy underside of her body. Now, each
anther is tucked away in one of the ten little pockets of the
saucer-shaped blossom, and the elastic filaments are strained upward
like a bow. After hovering above the nectary, the bee has only to
descend toward it, when her leg, touching against one of the
hair-triggers of the spring trap, pop! goes the little anther-gun,
discharging pollen from its bores as it flies upward. So delicately is
the mechanism adjusted, the slightest jar or rough handling releases the
anthers; but, on the other hand, should insects be excluded by a net
stretched over the plant, the flowers will fall off and wither without
firing off their pollen-charged guns. At least, this is true in the
great majority of tests. As in the case of hothouse flowers, no fertile
seed is set when nets keep away the laurel’s benefactors. One has only
to touch the hair-trigger with the end of a pin to see how exquisitely
delicate is this provision for cross-fertilization.
However much we may be cautioned by the apiculturists against honey made
from laurel nectar, the bees themselves ignore all warnings and
apparently without evil results--happily for the flowers dependent upon
them and their kin. Mr. Frank R. Cheshire, in “Bees and Bee-keeping,”
the standard English work on the subject, writes: “During the celebrated
Retreat of the Ten Thousand, as recorded by Xenophon in his ‘Anabasis,’
the soldiers regaled themselves upon some honey found near Trebizonde,
where were many bee-hives. Intoxication with vomiting was the result.
Some were so overcome”, he states, “as to be incapable of standing. Not a
soldier died, but very many were greatly weakened for several days.”
Tournefort endeavored to ascertain whether this account was corroborated
by anything ascertainable in the locality, and had good reason to be
satisfied respecting it. He concluded that the honey had been gathered
from a shrub growing in the neighborhood of Trebizonde, which is well
known there as producing the before-mentioned effects. It is now agreed
that the plants were species of rhododendron and azaleas. Lamberti
confirms Xenophon’s account by stating that similar effects are produced
by honey of Colchis, where the same shrubs are common. In 1790, even,
fatal cases occurred in America in consequence of eating wild honey,
which was traced to _Kalmia latifolia_ by an inquiry instituted under
direction of the American government.
Sheep-laurel, Lamb-kill, Wicky, Calf-kill, Sheep-poison, Narrow-leaved
Laurel (_K. angustifolia_), and so on through a list of folk-names
testifying chiefly to the plant’s wickedness in the pasture, may be
especially deadly food for cattle, but it certainly is a feast to the
eyes. However much we may admire the small, deep crimson-pink flowers
that we find in June and July in moist fields or swampy ground or on the
hillsides, few of us will agree with Thoreau, who claimed that it is
“handsomer than the Mountain Laurel.” The low shrub may be only six
inches high, or it may attain three feet. The narrow evergreen leaves,
pale on the underside, have a tendency to form groups of threes,
standing upright when newly put forth, but bent downward with the
weight of age. A peculiarity of the plant is that clusters of leaves
usually terminate the woody stem, for the flowers grow in whorls or in
clusters at the side of it below.