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AND SOME VARIATIONS

Several curiosities had shown up: we had seen pure white canescens but in southern Alabama there were whites and pale pinks with yellow blotches and with the lemon scent of R. alabamense, yet they could not be identified as this species. At one point a woodland glade was surrounded by a bizarre display in yellow, orange, white-pink, salmon and every intermediate color one might name. Several of these plants were sent back, earmarked as progeny from an apparent triple union between R. canescens, austrinum, and alabamense. On a quick return across central Georgia and Alabama a curious break in R. canescens was found on the hills of northwest Alabama and across into Mississippi in which the

flowers were somewhat smaller, of uniform color (lacking the red tube) and were often yellow blotched and scented. Through later collections, this variable assortment, typical of nothing in particular, was traced as far north as Cumberland County on Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau. Obviously they had points in common with the hybrid swarms above, but they are widespread, much older and almost certainly contain a dash of R. nudiflorum rather than the austrinum of the last mentioned mixture.

Rains had been heavy during the course of a too early search for R. alabamense proper and it was a mud covered Chevrolet that approached Atlanta, Georgia on the 20th of April to collect mail, replenish supplies and permit a brief pause for scheduled meetings with Jesse C. Nicholls, the azalea-conscious salamander purveyor of Murphy, North Carolina and with W. P. Lemmon of nearby Marietta, student of southern azaleas and authority for three recently described species.