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BY THE ATLANTIC TO VIRGINIA
Descent of the Savannah River in search of the Oconee Azalea had also led by design towards Beaufort County, South Carolina, which lies across the river on the Atlantic coast, due east of Clyo; but to cross the river one must necessarily travel very nearly to Savannah itself, which happened to be convenient for dispatching plants and for procuring labels and other needed supplies. Beaufort County, South Carolina, is the “type
In late April and early May the Coast Azalea makes truly a splendid sight as a multihued understory to the open pine woods of the coastal Carolinas. Since it is highly stoloniferous it recovers promptly in the wake of the brush fire or roadside trimming or grazing so that the year following will again see hundreds of upright flower clusters on wiry, knee-high stems borne by one plant an acre or more in extent. A mass collection of separate clones may necessitate covering a considerable territory to be sure that the 25 or 30 specimens are indeed different.
The course from Savannah to Norfolk, Virginia in search of R. atlanticum sounds very direct as just described. It is a distance of 500 road miles which was actually logged on the speedometer at a little more than twice this amount or 1200 miles — which is a fair illustration of the difference between plant collecting and just driving from one point to another! In this particular case the more inland pink azaleas of the Piedmont, R. canescens and nudiflorum, were also in flower so that the interior counties of the Carolinas were covered in a fairly thorough fashion on a zig-zag route which hit back to the coast at intervals instead of merely following it.
These side excursions were productive of many specimens and several valuable pieces of information. In South Carolina they yielded material from hybrid swarms obviously involving both R. canescens and atlanticum which are interesting as an indication that a measure of gene exchange does occur between these species; also in South Carolina it was discovered that the inland red clay hills of the Piedmont, which lie roughly between Columbia and Greenville, support very few azaleas. These hills grow excellent red cedar and have a soil pH often in the vicinity of 7.0, which is doubtless the explanation; and finally, in southern North Carolina, was discovered the interesting area of geographic overlap between southern R. canescens and northern nudiflorum as represented by pink flowered azaleas whose morphology might well test the patience of any precise taxonomist (and as they doubtless have).
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