University of Virginia Library

CONFUSION IN MACON COUNTY

Still anxious to find where else this little late red azalea might be, another visit was next paid to the Nantahala region of North Carolina, a few miles across the Georgia border. The first plants were found in a deep valley on the approach to Wayah Bald from the west. The plants were 2 ft. high in stoloniferous patches deep red in color and just coming into bloom at this higher elevation. But they were not alone. On all sides were bushes in a bewildering array of colors, of heights to fifteen feet or more and of flower sizes to 6 centimeters across the “wing” petals. Either R. Bakeri had gone crazy or it had met up with something else. The latter seems probably the better guess, for not far away were a few late-flowering individuals of normal, early Flame Azalea. The sampling and collecting of this amazing population consumed a full half day during which time the characteristics of these intermediates became reasonably familiar. Finally heading to Nantahala Lake and Wayah Bald, imagine our astonishment at discovering that the fast opening azalea display around the lake and well up the slopes of the mountain was composed not of R. Bakeri or “normal” calendulaceum but entirely of recurring batches of these vari-colored intermediates which eventually settled down to something resembling a reasonably uniform “type” of their own.[*] Other collections were made on later visits to this region, and many more in principally orange and orange-red colors were subsequently found at higher elevations (above 3000 ft.) north through the mountains and right back again to southwest Virginia and Kentucky. A seeming third phase of the R. calendulaceum complex presents a puzzling pattern which will need much further study for elucidation of its true nature and origin; but the fact of its existence begins to shed light on the confusing flowering-time behavior of R. calendulaceum from different collection sources.