Native Evergreen Rhododendron

 

People ask about evergreen shrubs for their landscaping, but I don’t see our evergreen rhododendrons get used as often as they should. This week I had a chance to see some of them blooming when I visited Nearly Native Nursery in Fayetteville. They were at peak bloom, and seeing them reminded me how beautiful they can be.

Rhododendron catawbiense

The first one I spotted was a dark color form of Rhododendron catawbiense, a northern species found in both NW and NE Georgia. Jim (the owner of the nursery) said that Cloudland Canyon State Park is a great place to see this species in the wild.

Rhododendron carolinianum

The next one I saw was a pale pink rhododendron with smaller leaves; I asked if it was R. minus but he said no, this was Rhododendron carolinianum, which has been considered as a variety of minus in the past. In Georgia, it is only in the very NE corner. The flower is a little bit smaller than R minus.

He had a beautiful specimen of Rhododendron minus blooming as well. I have seen it in the wild several times in Georgia; May is the perfect time to see it. It has a surprisingly large range in Georgia, from the NE to the SW.

Rhododendron minus

One other species is found in Georgia: the great laurel (Rhododendron maximum). And while all of these species are quite deserving of a place in our gardens, they are very hard to find in nurseries. You can find rhododendrons in the nurseries, but they are mostly hybrids and it’s very hard to figure out their parentage because sometimes even the parents are hybrids. Even cultivars with names like 'Catawbiense Album' and 'Catawbiense Boursault' hint at only partial parentage with a native species.

It’s time for someone to get back to propagating native evergreen rhododendrons without hybridizing them with non-native species so that gardeners can get these beauties into their landscapes.