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One of the best of the white flowered evergreen azaleas. Taller growing and more upright than some of the rather
low spreading forms that abound. It doesn't
matter much with young plants, but as they mature the taller ones become charismatic, and the spreading
ones start to look like domesticated volcanic oozing. 'Palestrina' is an old European hybrid raised by A. Vuyk, founder of the nursery Vuyk van Nes, some time before 1926 from a cross between a Kaempferi hybrid and R. 'J. C. van Tol'. This picture wasn't taken in the garden (a few years too early) but was the first picture that I took of the cultivar, when I lived in Reading. The International Rhododendron Register says: "Fls 2-3/truss, broady funnel-campanulate, 40 x 45mm, 5-lobed, white (155D), dorsal throat flecked with green. Calyx green, hairy. Lvs semi-elliptic, elliptic, 30 x 13 mm, hairy. AM 1944. FCC 1967." Trees and Shrubs online adds some interesting information: "The so-called Vuyk hybrids were raised by A. Vuyk, founder of the firm Vuyk van Nes. He raised a number of seedlings from various evergreen azaleas pollinated by the Mollis azalea ‘J. C. van Tol’. The offspring show no sign at all of the influence of the latter, and it is now thought that its effect was to induce the seed-parents to set seed apomictically. At any rate, this, rather than self-pollination, is the explanation put forward by H. J. Grootendorst in his work Rhododendrons en Azalea’s, to which we are indebted for information concerning the Dutch hybrids. The best known of this set are the lovely ‘Palestrina’, the seed-parent of which was a Malvaticum-Kaempferi hybrid; |
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