University of Virginia Library

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

locality” for the Coast Azalea, R. atlanticum, which according to our map should be in flower at the end of April. Our lead was correct for on April 27th the first plants were found in quantity not far from Burton where they held splendid pink blossoms knee high above fern and inkberry in the moist soils of cutover oak woodland. From this point, and with sundry detours, the Coast Azalea was followed in constant flower through the coastal counties of the Carolinas and Virginia and, with a week or two's break, to its most northerly distributional point on the Delmarva peninsula in Delaware. Here in Delaware it is still a low growing azalea; it is generally white flowered and often highly glandular with pin-head glands on leaves and shoots as well as on the flower parts; the leaves may be glaucous beneath. It would seem likely that such plants as these are most akin to the original form of this azalea and that the pink flowered and less glandular representatives of South Carolina and Virginia may imply a measure of genic interchange with pink flowered R. canescens and nudiflorum of these regions.

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).