At the ends of the numerous branches, during June and July, are showy clusters of pink or white flowers. Each blossom spreads nearly two inches and is composed of five broad, blunt-ended petals of a pink-white color spotted with golden-orange. They have ten spreading stamens and a small pistil.
Rhododendron is found in rich, hilly, or mountainous woods, commonly from Pa. to Ga. but rarely northward to Ontario and Nova Scotia.
Mountain Laurel; Spoon-wood (Kalmia latifolia) is one of the most popular of our beautiful flowering shrubs. In the North it grows from 3 to 8 feet in height, but in the Southern States it often attains heights of 20 to 30 feet.
The leaves are dark, glossy green, pointed at each end and oblong in shape; they are arranged alternately along the branches and in dense terminal clusters. The flowers are very peculiar in their construction, the corolla being deep saucer- or bowl-shaped, with five short, broad lobes; on the outside, around the bottom edge of the “bowl,” are ten small humps, that inside the corolla form little pockets to receive the anthers of the slender white stamens, curving from the centre of the blossom like the spokes of a wheel.
Both moths and bees visit these flowers in quest of the little supply of nectar that is secreted about the base of the greenish pistil. The flower stems are sticky so that only winged insects can get to the interior. Laurel is common from N. B. to Ont. and southward.
Sheep Laurel; Lambkill (Kalmia angustifolia) is a small, shrubby species, ranging from 8 to 36 inches high. Besides the common names given above, it is less often known as “Sheep Poison” and “Wicky,” a rather sinister lot of names to be applied to a shrub with such handsome flowers.
All of the Laurels have dangerous properties, the juices of the leaves being very poisonous. It is also claimed that honey made by bees feeding on the nectar from Laurel blossoms is also poisonous. This species gets its many names, referring to its destructive effects on sheep, because it grows in abundance in pastures suitable only for the pasturage of sheep. The leaves of this small Laurel look tempting but are often very fatal to the animals eating them.
Their shapes, forms, and mechanisms are about like those of the [Mountain Laurel], but the color is a beautiful, deep pink; little red anthers fit snugly in the ten little pockets formed for them in the surface of the corolla. Sheep Laurel is common from Lab. to Ont. and southward, blooming in June and July.