The Rhododendron is commonly spoken and written of as the Alpine Rose; but it is a member of the Heath family, and not of that family which fable says was created by Bacchus. This is a ready instance of where popular nomenclature, without discipline, leads to confusion; for there is an Alpine Rose (Rosa alpina), a very lovely rich magenta-coloured Eglantine often growing cheek-by-jowl with the pseudo Alpenrose of the Germans. It is quite possible that the word “Rose” really springs—as in Monte Rosa—from roisa or roësa, meaning “glacier” in the ancient patois of the valley of Aosta, and I have several times seen this more than suggested by authorities in etymology. The fact remains, however, that the Rhododendron has become a rose and has thus obscured to some extent the repute and worth of the real Alpine Rose. In French, the Rhododendron, though it is often known as Rose des Alpes, is sometimes spoken of as Rue des Alpes and Rosage.
The Rhododendron is the Swiss national flower. Nor am I sure but that this honour is not borne almost entirely by R. ferrugineum. This is far more widespread than is hirsutum, being far less difficult in its likes and dislikes. For example, notwithstanding that hirsutum loves limestone, it shuns the Jura Mountains, whereas ferrugineum is common in the Jura, though usually it is shy of lime. And if the honours really are undivided, they seem to be won by superior aptness, and the laurel-wreath rests, I think, upon the more appropriate brow. For, of the two, ferrugineum best typifies the Swiss national character—masculine sturdiness, common-sensed sanity, void of fine fastidiousness. The whole habit of ferrugineum is more robust, more rigid, more resistant. It seeks small clemency; it has, so to speak, its teeth set, prepared to front the rudest buffets of Alpine circumstance without a prayer for pity, and to come up smiling in spite of all. Although, of course, hirsutum has its own good way of overcoming severe conditions, it has a greater delicacy of bearing and does not impress one as being possessed of its cousin’s rugged nature.
Eugène Rambert, the Swiss poet-alpinist, speaks of the Rhododendron as being “la plante alpine par excellence” and in doing so he probably uses the word “Alpine” in the same sense in which we ourselves are here using it, or else perhaps he refers to the plant as, for the most part, it is resident in Switzerland. For on the Italian face of the Alps the Rhododendron descends, as around Lugano, to the plains. Mr. Stuart Thompson, who has made a special study of altitude in connection with the mountain flora, says in his “Alpine Plants of Europe” that R. ferrugineum “ascends to 8,800 feet in Valais, to at least 8,200 feet in the Maritime Alps, and descends into the plain in Tessin by Lago Maggiore (with R. hirsutum), and by Lake Wallenstadt, and it is occasionally found as a glacier relic in turbaries in the woods of the Swiss plateau.”
Mr. Thompson, by mentioning the fact of the remains of Rhododendron being found in peat deposits on the plains, gives us a glimpse of this plant slowly retreating up the mountains with the glaciers. And yet, on the south side of the Alps, it is still to be found upon the plains! This is one of the mysteries of Alpine plant-life, and one for which I have seen no satisfactory theory. Gentiana verna shows us, I believe, the same seeming inconsistency, descending to the sea-coast in Ireland, yet rarely, if ever, found below 1,300 feet in Switzerland.
Like the English Dog Rose—and this, perhaps, is its greatest likeness to a Rose—the Rhododendron develops galls (Oak-apples or Robin’s Pincushions, as they are called in England) upon its leaves. Some of these are produced by insects and some by a fungus (Exobasidium rhododendri), the latter gall being yellow, and turning pink or rose on the sunny side. The leaves and flowers are used in infusion for rheumatism; also as an ingredient of Swiss tea. This shrub, too, is the food-plant of one of the handsomest of Alpine butterflies, Colias Palæno, a Clouded-Yellow—anything but clouded, though it lives where clouds are born, for with its clear citron wings boldly bordered with jet-black and rimmed with tender rose, it is a bright, true child of high altitudes.
Nor should the Rhododendron be forgotten as a subject for our gardens. When raised from layers or from seed, it takes quite kindly to our climate. Indeed, the plants at “Floraire,” M. Henry Correvon’s charming garden near Geneva, come from England—a fact that will sound much in line with that of living at Brighton and receiving one’s fish from London! This anomaly, in the case of the Rhododendron, is due to the great difficulty of acclimatising the plant to the Swiss plains. When, however, it has once been acclimatised in England it will transplant to Switzerland with the greatest success. I cannot remember ever to have seen in Switzerland a successfully transplanted native plant of Rhododendron, even though, as is frequently the case around mountain hotels, it has been a question of moving it only some few yards from where it was growing wild. These wild plants have a strong objection to being tamed. But in England’s humid climate it is quite easy to cultivate, and if fields are to be added to our rockworks the Rhododendron must have a place in them—a place around the solitary rocks, a place with the Daphne and the shrubby Honeysuckles.
With what fecundity of resource Nature marshals her forces; with what amazing ingenuity she passes to her goal! As if to show her wayward child how academic strictness in one straight line is not the road to greatest success, she takes a thousand ways to reach one and the same end, causing extremes and opposites in method to give a common high result. And this she does on every hand, and in all of her domains. In the world with which we are now dealing—the plant-world—she is particularly rich in ways and means. See how, for example, some flowers need the wind to assist them to propagate their kind, and note the many ways such flowers have of courting the wind’s assistance; see how others need the bees and flies to busy themselves about them, and note the many ways such have of attracting the attentions of bees and flies; see how some will call in a beetle to eat his way to their hearts, whilst others will just hob-nob together, independent of any intermediary. See, again, how some plants bury their roots in the earth for sustenance, whilst others, with like object, will bury them in the air; see, too, how some will climb by the help of their thorns, whilst others will do so by the aid of tendrils, or of rootlets, or of adhering fingers. An admirably efficient way of achieving a purpose does not preclude the possibility of there being a score or more other and equally efficient ways of achieving the same purpose. One species of Orange-tree may carry its seed in the core of its fruit, whilst another may carry it in a special exterior annexe; or one species of Mangrove-tree may breathe by means of its leaves, whilst another may do so by means of tube-like organs thrown up through the soft mud.