Swamp Honeysuckle; White Azalea (Rhododendron viscosum) is a most beautiful swamp shrub with handsome, fragrant, white flowers. In low, wet swamps it is very common and blooms very profusely during June and July. The bush is from 3 to 8 feet in height and very branchy. The leaves are long-oval, broadest toward the blunt-pointed tip and narrowing to short stems.
The beautiful flowers are pure white, or rarely tinged with pink; the tube of the long corolla is covered with very sticky brownish hairs, and terminates in five, large-pointed spreading lobes. The stamens are very long, slender, and white, and tipped with yellow anthers. The five-pointed calyx is very small and inconspicuous.
During the early time of their bloom all the Azaleas bear hanging among the fragrant flowers, peculiar, juicy, pulpy growths that are edible, as any well-bred farmer’s boy knows; he calls them May or Swamp Apples, but they are really modified buds and not fungous growths or caused by insects, as was formerly believed. These beautiful Azaleas are found from Me. to Ohio and southward.
(A) Pink Azalea; Pinxter Flower; Wild Honeysuckle (Rhododendron nudiflorum) is one of our most interesting wild shrubs, interesting because the flowers bloom before the leaves appear, or just as they commence to grow, and because of the very beautiful colors its pink flowers impart to our swamps during April and early May. The flowers are practically the same in form as the white varieties, except that the corolla tube is shorter.
Pink Azalea grows in open woods or swamps from Me. to Ill. and southward.
(B) Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense) is a beautiful member of this family, immortalized in verse by Emerson. It is a smaller shrub, growing from 1 to 3 feet high. The flowers usually appear before the pale-green, oblong leaves; the corolla is about one inch long, light magenta, and two-lipped. The upper lip is three-lobed and the lower is nearly divided into two distinct linear petals. They grow in thin clusters terminating the branches. Rhodora is found on damp hillsides and in swamps from Newfoundland to Quebec and south to N. J. and Pa., flowering during May and June.
American Rhododendron; Great Laurel (Rhododendron maximum) is a large, tall, and very ornamental shrub growing from 5 to 35 feet high. It is one of the most characteristic shrubs of the Alleghany Mountain region, where it grows in such profusion as to form almost impenetrable thickets. As it is a very hardy shrub and not injured by transplanting, it is very often used for decorative effects in parks and about private dwellings.
The oblong leaves are deep, glossy green, tough and leathery in texture, and have a smooth, slightly rolled-under edge. They droop in the winter season but are widespread in summer.