Rhododendron Culture in America

ROSES, like the never ending subject of female charms, have had more than their share of the poets’ attentions ; the lilies and violets and slender harebells, even the whitethorn and the elder-brake, have not lacked their prophets; the daisies must always be loved for Chaucer’s sake as well as for their own ; but to the praise of the rhododendron, sonnet and lyric are alike unwritten. Doubtless a feeling of chivalry on the part of the poets has led them to immortalize the flower which has certain feminine characteristics

while the masculine assertiveness of the rhododendron makes any championship quite unnecessary.

It would be hard to find among shrubs a more striking personality. The great blossoms are held boldly erect, as if challenging the passer-by, each perfect flower head surrounded by its circlet of heavy dark leaves, stiffly horizontal or bent slightly back from the blossom, that nothing be lost. Even in November, when its relative, the deciduous azalea, goes into enforced retirement and begins the winter of its discontent, the rhododendron abdicates nothing of its supremacy; not only do the leaves maintain their tropical luxuriance, but the hard green buds, which appeared as soon as possible after the blossoms had passed, are there, one in the centre of each leaf circlet, to serve as an evidence of things not seen until the blossoms themselves can again assert their claim to attention.

Through the labors of the Dutch and English horticulturists the cultivated rhododendron came early into prominence. With their magnificent blooms, colors ranging from cardinal to white, from white again to royal purple, scores of varieties made conquests in the English gardens. In the meantime, in America, until 1855 practically nothing had been done in rhododendron culture. The native varieties, R. Catawbiense and R. maximum, throve no better in the gilded captivity of civilization than the Indian Pocahontas in English society: that which was wild beauty among the forest brotherhood became as a straggling, unkempt growth against the polished setting of turf and gardened perfectness. Plants were imported from England and Holland, but instead of flourishing like the green bay tree and the wicked, they proved as capricious as a spoiled beauty, as unstable as April sunshine.

The reason is not far to seek. Any one who has seen rhododendrons just out of the crates in which they come from abroad, or even on the bargain counter of a department store, — a situation which ought to be the death of any self-respecting plant, — remembers the “ ball ” of roots, about as large as the grape fruit, protected with damp moss and secured with twine or raffia. Now in the accustomed soil and moist climate the plant had heretofore found these roots amply sufficient, but in this country the conditions are altogether different. Instead of “England’s watery sky,” which an eighteenth-century poet praises for its horticultural value, our climate has at times the distracting manner of a lightning-change artist: therefore, with the extremes of heat and cold and droughts in autumn — one of the hardest tests of plant endurance — life to the foreign rhododendron becomes often a struggle for existence ; for, however the Psalmist applied the words in other matters, among plants which have to face a severe winter the battle is to the strong. Sometimes, after apparently dying, a rhododendron will come back to a kind of half-hearted life. A few of the hardier sorts, plants which have the rugged Catawbiense in their composition, adapt themselves with what grace they can to the new conditions, especially if the Norway spruce, or some other sturdy tree, lends its kind offices as a wind-break until they can obtain a firm footing ; but at best their life is uncertain. I have known an English specimen, after thriving for fifteen years, to succumb to the test of an unusually severe winter; instead of unbending in April to the spring sunshine, the leaves were still curled tightly from cold, hanging lifeless as oak leaves in December.

To those who had at heart a brilliant American success for the foreign rhododendron, this result was naturally discouraging. Instead of strong plants, crowned in June with richly colored blossoms, here were shrubs, needing to be humored and cosseted like nervous invalids! Knowing the vigor of the native rhododendron and its near relative the mountain laurel, horticulturists began to say with the Apostle, “ Brethren, these things ought not so to be.” Therefore, work began toward the obvious solution of the problem ; now, instead of importing, we grow all the finer varieties which give the climate the slightest tolerance ; making “Scotch babies ” of the plants; accustoming them from their infancy to the soil and climate, that they may make the roots they needed.

Rhododendrons are usually propagated by grafting. The seedlings of the cultivated varieties are uncertain as to kind, and possibly the nurserymen credit the rarer sorts with something of the finegentleman distaste for the problem of wresting their own living from the soil. But when grafted on the common seedlings, the sordid question of livelihood troubles them no longer ; to the “ stock,” as the gardeners call it, belongs the matter of maintenance; while as for the “ scions,” “ all their powers find sweet employ ” in making ready the gorgeous finery for the June carnival, —an occupation much more to their liking.

The rhododendron chiefly used as a stock for grafting, both here and in Europe, is not, as might be supposed, our native Catawbiense, rather the Ponticum, of Asiatic origin, — a rhododendron which, while as hardy, gives a more luxuriant growth, adapts itself more easily to the trammels of civilization, than the American variety. The Ponticum, it is to be hoped, has become reconciled to that state of life to which it has pleased Providence and the horticulturists to call it; in the rhododendron world it occupies the position of the “ other half.” The Catawbiense and maximum can take possession of the mountain sides from New York and Pennsylvania to the Carolinas, but the Ponticum, though it may blossom in its native Asia Minor, has never a chance of blossoming here, and in Europe it fares no better; three or four inches of stem below the graft is all that can be seen of it above ground ; it appears not in nursery catalogues nor in horticultural exhibits ; its identity is sunk in the graft; its energy is spent in making the abundant roots necessary to sustain the magnificence of the more aristocratic scion, while its only reward is the consciousness of virtue which, according to the old-fashioned primers, should be all-sufficient.

The grafting of rhododendrons is by no means the simple, offhand operation which answers the purpose with an apple tree, — a cleft in a branch, a twig of another sort inserted, and there an end of the matter, — not at all! They have the long period of helpless infancy so potent in human evolution. The Ponticum seedling must be three years old before it can be grafted, and not until five years after is it considered safe to trust a plant away from the fostering care of its nursery.

For all the coddling received, there is a large infant mortality during the first year after grafting. The stock, of course, does not die, but the scion does; and on lifting a sash from the greenhouse benches and looking down on the little round heads of leaves, each one a plant, buried almost up to its neck in damp moss as with a blanket, one sees often a large proportion hopelessly brown and withered, especially among the rarer sorts, the finer colors. “These,” said a Swiss horticulturist, who has passed his life among rhododendrons, “ these are the aristocracy. They will not have great families of children, like the peasants. No, no ! That is ‘ Charles Dickens,’ ” he added. “ Ah, he is a fine one, but you will not get many grafts from him ! ” He moved a little farther down the greenhouse and again raised a sash that I might see more of the green-leaved “ babies” in their blankets of moss. “And that is ‘ Mrs. Milner,’ ” he said, beaming through his spectacles in mother love as he bent over the infant rhododendrons ; seeing in his mind the crimson blossoms with which some future June would crown each little head, as a fond mother sees a future President in the cradle. “ Oh, the dear lady, the dear lady ! ” he breathed, with adoring emphasis.

Another day we sat grafting, or rather, he was grafting, making the clean, straight cuts of the practiced craftsman, and fitting the scions to the stocks with beautiful exactness, and I, ignominiously going through the form, inserting in aimless bits of wood scions too weak for the waste of a good stock. Very brown and unpromising are the seedling Ponticums as they stand on the bench, the green tops cut off, looking like so many dead sticks, each thrust in its ball of earth ; but, however they may seem alike to the novice, it is a matter of vast importance to the scion that it be grafted on a strong stock. “ If you will grow rhododendrons,” said my friend, “ it is necessary to trust in the Lord and have good stocks. That one is no good, — you can graft it,’ he added rather uncomplimentarily, handing me a ball of earth with a spindling, twisted stock protruding. We had been clearing the air — or clouding it — with his usual quota of Kant and Schopenhauer. “ The azalea is a lady,” he remarked finally (having fixed Mr. Herbert Spencer to his satisfaction in undisputed possession of the philosophical field, and come back to matters nearer at hand). He paused, and deliberated over the selection of a stock which would best suit the scion of “ Henry Probasco ” he held in his hand, and then repeated, “ The azalea is a lady. She has the prettiness, the gayety, the charm,” he continued, emphasizing each attribute with the necessary cuts in the stock of his choice. “ But the rhododendron is a gentleman ; he is a fine fellow, and he knows it! ” he finished, with a little grunt of satisfaction, for young “ Henry Probasco ’’ fitted exactly into the place made for him.

In grafting, as in surgical operations, aside from the strength of the patient, success depends upon the clean, quick cuts, the nice joining of the parts. The scion should fit perfectly into the place cut for it in the side of the stock, the bark touching, and the tying should be as accurate as the bandaging of a limb, — “ just right,” as the Herr Propagator says. “ You must not strangle the little fellow, and you must not let the air come in ; it should be just right.” But the result — “ art and nature thus allied ” — is eminently satisfactory, and in later years it gives one a pleasant feeling of importance to see a fine plant and reflect that one has had a finger in its making.

Aside from the reproduction of fine varieties by grafting, new and valuable sorts are obtained, here as among other plants, by hybridizing, — a process which always requires patience, and with the rhododendrons an especial amount of that virtue. After transferring the pollen from one plant to the pistil of another, securing the seed and planting it, there is the tedious interval of three or four years, until the seedlings blossom, before it is possible to know if a new kind has been obtained. Then, when the desirable plant has been selected, it will be another four years before it yields wood enough to graft a dozen plants.

Some valuable kinds owe their existence to the results of chance seedlings. The bees, by the way, who should do something in the matter of cross-fertilization, have a clever method of avoiding their duties. Instead of diving into the heart of each flower cup, dusting themselves with pollen, carrying away a load to be left on another blossom, and so earning the taste of sweet, the rascally fellows, in spite of their boasted industry, will have none of such a laborious process : they simply make from the outside a neat puncture at the base of each flower, which enables them to reach the nectar without the slightest inconvenience. At the end of June it is hard to find a white rhododendron bloom which has not some flowers bearing the tiny brown marks of the bees.

It is in June that the rhododendrons attain their preeminence. Just before them, heralding their approach, come the flaming Ghent azaleas, gay in the richest of oranges and yellows ; even some of the pink varieties must needs have one orange petal, true Hollanders that they are ! Then come the rhododendrons, claiming, challenging, demanding, absorbing attention in their imperious beauty, royal in scarlet and purple, delicate in mauve and lilac and crimson softening to pale rose tints. The plants crowded with blossoms, not one of the perfect flower heads has the slightest intention of being overlooked ; its stiff dark leaves, set spikewise, seem elbowing it into prominence. The rhododendron does not hide its light under a bushel.

In the nurseries, the fields are a riot of color. One could almost make rainbows among the rhododendrons and azaleas, lacking but blue and indigo to give the “ seven proper colors chorded.”The colors can be blended as well as “ chorded; ” thirty or forty varieties could be planted whose tints shade from one to the other, until the vivid atrosanguineum, red as the oxheart cherry, blends imperceptibly into the white of album elegans with its faint blush on the half-opened petals, which, in its turn, when fully opened, the novice might easily mistake for candidissimum, unless he looked for the yellow centre which keeps it from attaining the white perfection.

It needs a practiced eye to distinguish the different varieties. The crimson magnificence of “ Henry Probasco ” is easily recognized by the crimped petals ; Kissena, a pretty little dwarf, also adds these to the charms of its pale lavender blossoms. But the other varieties are not so conveniently marked : sometimes two kinds, almost alike in color, will differ in the time of opening ; the tint of giganteum, for instance, one of the earliest of the red rhododendrons is nearly identical with that of the later beauty, kettledrum, which despite its brazen name, comes in at the end of the procession. There are also differences in habit and character, unimportant perhaps to the casual observer, but lovingly noted by the horticulturist, to whom, as to a mother, each child has his individual perfections. My friend, the Herr Propagator, is aghast at the ignorance which confuses the English “ Mrs. Milner,” — whose flat leaves should enable any one to recognize it in the dark, — “ Mrs. Milner,” the comfortably inclined to breadth and embonpoint, with “ H. W. Sargent,” undeniably thin, and calls them both indifferently “ red rhododendrons.”

Very often the brilliant coloring is balanced by a slighter growth, with foliage not so abundant as in less striking varieties.

may be a warning for plants as it was for Admetus ; but, however that may be, the opportunity is still open for some horticulturist to send his name down to posterity on a rhododendron which unites the color of “ Charles Bagley ” or “ Charles Dickens,” vivid as the scarlet salvias, with the tall, luxuriant growth of grandiflorum.

Another sphere for the exercise of horticultural ambition is afforded by the Rhododendron Dauricum. This is an almost unknown deciduous variety, a curious half-breed, evidently a cross between a rhododendron and an azalea. The blossoms, of a pinkish lilac, are about as.large as those of the Azalea mollis, and are borne before the leaves have even dreamed of coming out, appearing sometimes at the end of February, with a serene indifference to the thermometer, the calendar, and other niceties of plant usage. The Dauricum was sent over from England many years ago, where it now seems to be unobtainable. I know of but one plant in this country, and that has evidently a rooted objection to leaving that copy of itself which, as George Eliot says, the sonneteers of the sixteenth century deemed so necessary. Stock after stock has offered to sustain the scions in luxury, but the Dauricum still ignores the blandishments of horticulturists like a marble-hearted novel heroine.

The sturdy Americans, “ General Grant ” with its rose-colored blooms, and “ Lincoln ” of deeper tint, belong naturally to that group of most valiant rhododendrons which defy even Bar Harbor winters. The tall-growing roseum superbum and candidissimum; grandiflorum, one of the best varieties for American planting, tough as a New England pine, and in color on the border land between magenta and crimson, like the buds of the red French lilacs ; album grandiflorum, white save for the touch of lavender on the buds; purpureum crispum, with its crimped petal elegance; the dwarf Everestianum, one of the strongest despite its fragile-looking blossoms, pale lilac with a hint of pink, are others of this goodly company. “ Mrs. Milner ” behaves like a heroine, bearing the severest winters with unruffled complacency ; the holly-red bicolor, “Charles Dickens,” and “Sargent,” all of English descent, acquit themselves nobly, and the Americans “Probnsco” and “Dr. Torrey ” are not behind them in courage. Wherever the mountain laurel, the Catawbiense or maximum has established itself, this group of cultivated rhododendrons can enter into the land and possess it, not the least disadvantaged by their higher education.

But here as elsewhere in nature it is impossible to draw a hard-and-fast line. There are dozens of varieties which merely suffer a little in an unusually severe winter, easily recovering themselves in the milder weather, perfectly hardy in any ordinary degree of cold, simply manifesting a distaste for the forefront of the battle. Among these are Caractacus, rather dwarf, but with vivid cerise blossoms, which capture the attention its low stature might miss ; the taller roseum luteum, unique with its yellow centre ; while the English variety, Lee’s Dark Purple, always suffers severely ; although luxuriant in foliage and richest of the rhododendrons in purple, —

the American purpureum elegans and purpureum splendidum, though coming after it, are preferred before it ; at the other extreme, straining horticultural tolerance to the utmost, are a few varieties which ought never to have tried the climate unless they could have adequate winter protection. Poor “ Lady Cathcart ” emerges in the spring in an exhausted, bedraggled condition, but manages to show a few of the pale pink blossoms with chocolate blotches which were intended to make quite a sensation.

When hardy varieties are planted, the rhododendron requires no unusual care. The peat, in which it flourishes in Holland and in some English nurseries, does not suit it at all under American skies; but otherwise it is no epicurean, being quite satisfied with ordinarily good garden soil (of course the richer, the better), limestone being the only diet the roots positively refuse, and they will not tolerate the slightest admixture of it: therefore, whoever has the wicked thing in his midst must either remove the soil to the depth of two or three feet, and fill in with other, or else forego all hope of growing the rhododendron.

The wise gardeners try to discourage the reckless profusion with which the rhododendron brings out its blossoms by removing some of the buds, so that the plant, its duties thus lightened, can make better provision for the remaining buds, have larger, more beautiful flower heads, and improve its general health at the same time.

An enduring comfort to the grower of the rhododendron is its comparative freedom from insect pests ; even the San José scale, the destruction of the gardens, the bête noire of tree and shrub, has no terror for it. Those insects which have courage enough to attack the stiff heavy leaves can inflict only a temporary disfigurement, not affecting the life of the plant in the least.

Through its very positiveness and luxuriance of color the rhododendron suffers as few shrubs do from inharmonious arrangement. I have the greatest respect for an excellent lady who not only planted with a proper regard for the various colorings, but had her house painted solely with the idea of setting off to best advantage a large “ General Grant ” which grew near it. Would that plants always received as much consideration! Landscape gardeners are often unfamiliar with the different sorts or careless about color schemes; men and women of culture and artistic sense, who would be sorely troubled by a lack of color harmony in their drawing-rooms, will yet maintain a serene indifference to the conflict on their lawns, where rhododendrons of clashing tints struggle for the supremacy. I have in mind a lawn which for ten successive Junes has been the dueling ground of two beautifulrhododendrons, — grandiflorum with its hint of magenta, and the clear wild-rose pink of roseum elegans. To enjoy is impossible. One can only complain with the old poet, —

But, unfortunately, the suggestion is rarely effected. In many persons there exists a strange reluctance to move a plant once safe in Mother Earth, — very much the same feeling a schoolboy exhibits when asked to hold a baby; although there is nothing occult in either operation, and for the rhododendron there is only necessary an ordinary observance of times and seasons and a decent regard for the roots.

To be placed in an isolated group, stranded, as it were, in a green expanse of lawn, is a trying and unnatural situation for any shrub. The rhododendron endures this glaring publicity better than most of its fellow sufferers, aided, no doubt, by its natural lack of timidity; yet to be seen to best advantage it should be planted in masses against the green background of the forest trees, the brilliant colors craving the quiet shadow of the woods. Within the woods the blossoms lose their luxuriance, but at the edge, with the dark trees as a setting, they are at peace with themselves and all the world in their chosen environment.

It is not given to all the evergreens to grow old gracefully. Although the forest trees, the little Japanese conifers, the yew trees, and the box attain a picturesque old age, many of the “ ornamentals ” at twenty-five or thirty, instead of becoming patriarchal, simply begin to look rusty and unkempt; but a rhododendron of forty winters may have the graceful outline of a magnolia conspicua, and vie with the youngest of its brothers in the profusion of June splendor.

For many years the rhododendron made its way slowly. Hardiness is a virtue which must be above suspicion, and the frailty of so many of the foreign sorts sadly injured the reputation of the stoutest English and American worthies. But the permanent and ever increasing beauty of the plant, the union of the rare coloring of the exotic with the hardihood of the wild species, the dominant character, the effectiveness, have had their reward, and in America the cultivated rhododendron has now come into its own, and is first in the garden aristocracy even as the wild rhododendron holds itself first among the shrubs in its mountain fastnesses.

Frances Duncan.