Rhododendrons And The Potency Of Native America

I often spend a lot of time on this blog touting the benefits and perhaps even superiority of native plants.  This is not to say that I think imports and exotics don't have their place; where would we be without wheat, rice, etc?  My house garden is actually quite full of foreign and distantly native things like western lupines and sagebrush, southern trees, that and I really have a thing going for portulacas and rare hostas, and... of course I just adore Rhododendrons.  Truth be told, they are a "distant native" here too.  Michigan has only one species of a native Rhododendron, Rhododendron Groenlandicum, which is found mostly in the northern reaches of the state where bogs are a regular feature of the landscape.  The species that I have elaborated on last week are all Appalachian beauties that come close only as near as Ohio.

Maybe at one point they were more widespread, however, and perhaps crusaded against in a mad dash by the people of our continent to cultivate and develop every last inch of land they could find.  This sort of thing has happened to many of our regional botanical gems, including mangroves in Florida, Longleaf Pines (Pinus Palustris) throughout the southeastern United States, so many prairie plants in the interior of the continent, cactus and sagebrush species in the west, and everywhere, the towering trees that had caused reluctant second born North Americans to stay in their experimental colonies.

Believe it or not, until the industrial way of the world got well underway in the later part of the nineteenth century, complete with great lumps of immigrants to power the factories and mills, the main commercial attraction of these shores would be the vegetation.  Rough winters and ideological uncertainties were harsh selling points for Europeans thinking about having a go at a venture in Virginia, Massachusetts Bay, and Quebec.  Mexico and Cuba long had a stronger advantage over such places in terms of climactic desirability, even after the allure of potential easy gold had dimmed to mere cantina discussions over the old days of legends and legendary explorers.  But in all of these places, a rather incredible, and tough, world that was nearly unspoiled lay before astonished Europeans.  For the English and Dutch, and far more so the French, the economic attraction of these unspoiled lands was great.  One of the stars of the show were the pines, conifers that seemed to be an inexhaustible resource of legendary, yet living, proportions.

The trees made the colonies possible.  They allowed for ships to be built for large Spanish fleets to defend the interests of a nation where the domestic supply of forest was growing very thin.  They allowed the Puritans of New England to sustain a colony founded on ideological grounds by selling their lumber into the great circle of trade between them, England (who sought out ships of her own), Africa, and the Caribbean.  They made for wonderful habitat for the fur bearers pursued by the French who traveled as far as the western mountains on canoes made by their unsurpassed timber.  More so than any of this, though, the trees and plants were unlike anything they had seen back in a depleted mother land.  Once the initial economic foundations had been laid and the New World took on a separate life of its own, the colonies stopped being viewed as a savage frontier.  The vegetation of the continent started becoming every bit as desirable and aesthetically pleasing as it was already quite valuable for utility.  The gardens of Europe were getting more formal, more refined, and needed new sources of excitement to be dressed up into the realm of the exotic.

Enter then both the old aristocracy and the new upstarts with names such as Washington and Monticello.  Like most good aristocrats, they loved beauty but preferred to pass on the work to subordinates.  Their carefully cultivated plant museums were stocked and maintained by botanists both domestic and imported.  Men such as John Fraser, Francois Andre Mirchaux, and many others before and after them glided into the western frontiers of the dark forests and found and returned with amazing plants for the rich gardens.  North American flora became a very hot commodity, but this it remained, a mere commodity.  The founding fathers and founding scientists took pride in the powerful, seemingly indestructible vegetation that was as much responsible for creating a mysterious and seemingly dangerous frontier as any of the native peoples helped to produce.  For the most part, though, they were absorbed in the economic value of these home grown things.

The common people of the era were much more concerned with clearing out and selling the pine forests and rhododendron thickets they came across.  To them, the most valuable plants were not ones that could provide for grand specimens in huge gardens, but rather apple trees which could produce safely drinkable cider and fruit or cash crops such as cotton and tobacco.  The great pines were amazing, but considered commonplace and inexhaustible.  The rhododendrons and other such non-lumber plants were just a mess to get out of the way of room meant for fields.  The small gardens which took up residence near domestic quarters were filled with familiar garden plants often imported from Europe, planted in an attempt to push off the frontier and create some sense of "civilized" tranquility.  The frontier moved on, eventually, but the wilderness which created it in the first place would slowly grow back; any glace at a map to this day will still show grand areas of green surrounded by cultivated miles upon miles, and this of course would be Appalachia. 

Well over a century would have to pass before people started thinking of the local plants as symbolic of what a truly different world North America had remained to exist as.  As economic opportunities shifted from into diverse fields of opportunity beyond natural resource extraction, and especially as the emotionally detached Enlightenment thinkers and encyclopedic intellectuals faded into memory during the Romantic ascension of the nineteenth century, North Americans started valuing their landscape on a different level.  North American art became dominated at certain stages by naturalist painters who thrilled in dramatic landscapes.  People trying to find a renewal of the spirit by departing noisy, polluted city life sought to try and conserve the land, its vegetation, and animals first in societies, then in zoos, and finally in reserves and parks. 

The damage had long since been done, however, and things such as rhododendrons, cacti, grasses, and even pines were reduced in territory to land that was considered less desirable for cultivation and development.  In short, there might have been a time where rhododendrons would have spread throughout Ontario and Michigan, cacti would have been common as far east as dunes lapped at by Lake Champlain, and an Eastern White Pine putting up a brave, if stunted, front on the tallgrass prairie of Nebraska would not have been entirely unthinkable.  The damage is still being done!  One is hard pressed to find people in the south planting, let alone remembering, their amazing Longleaf Pines.  The last sanctuary of the rhododendrons is being shaved away as mountain tops are entirely removed to get at a wimpy little layer of coal within.  Ranchers and home owners in Texas and Oklahoma still drag chains on their land to rip out anything resembling a cactus.  Nature, especially here in the demanding New World, however, has ways of showing just how tough and devil-may-care our plants, like our people, can be:

Mt. Mitchell, North Carolina.

Same as above

Great Smokey Mountains National Park, North Carolina side.

That's right.  Barely any soil to speak of except that made by otherwise beautiful and delicate Rhododendrons.  This is a New World which does not give up without a fight!

Thanks to all my viewers for taking a stop here on the blog and making this the most viewed month ever.  I'm glad to see that the spirit of exploration and a desire for learning can still be found in an age of reality television.

Not Really Rhododendrons: Mountain Laurel (Kalmia Latifolia)

Well, we took a look at the three biggies of the Appalachian Rhododendrons this week.  The funny thing is, however, there is another plant that, while not a Rhododendron in any way, shape, or form (other than also being a member of the heath family), they compete with them rather well on their home turf in terms of sheer loveliness. 

Somewhere along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  This specimen was so lovely that I actually did a Blue Ridge "no-no" and stopped traffic to take a picture of it and sigh over its gracefulness for a few seconds.  People honked, but then they each did the same thing behind me.  The sun filtered through the canopy so perfectly on this one glorious tree that I figured it just had to be arranged as such by Divine Providence.

Mountain Laurels grow in association with the Rhododendrons, where they expect similar conditions of fickleness in terms of soil acidity, just the right shares of sunlight and shade, and handle practically growing right out of a pile of rocks with the same ease as any of member of the heath family.  The funny thing is, they are a heath plant, but are closer related to blueberries than Rhododendrons.  They are evergreen, and they could definitely qualify as a small tree; their branches are curled, twisting, and numerous, forming an under-canopy cage of sorts just like the Catawbas.  Their leaves tend to look more like, well, a blueberry's, but much larger in scale.

Blue Ridge Parkway, near some sort of overlook.  This one had seen better days, but was still growing strong from some of its branches.

They are fairly common throughout much of all but the far northern Appalachians, and even grow as far south as the Mississippi gulf coast.  This means they can handle lower, steamy southern elevations, even while they seem at home up to the 5,000 foot mark.  They seemed to be most common between 4,000 and 5,000 feet.  I did not see as many Mountain Laurels as I saw Rosebays or even Catawbas, but when I did come across them, they were hard to miss.  I have never seen a single one in cultivation, although apparently many people grow them.  It seems that the Master Gardener keeps them mostly for himself, which is probably for the best, because nearly every one I have come across is a masterpiece when left in its own setting.

Words fail to describe more of this lovely thing, so I will let the rest of the non-Rhododendrons do the talking.  I never did manage to get a close up of the leaves or the flowers, in most cases because they were actually a bit inaccessible, being off some dangerous looking outcropping too far up or down to get safely close.

This was also off the Blue Ridge Parkway, hiding behind what a Table Mountain Pine (Pinus Pungens).

These last three are of the same glorious plant growing off of Newfound Gap Road in Great Smokey Mountains National Park on the Tennessee side.  This plant illustrates how thoroughly the blooms overtake the body of the tree.

Rhododendrons: Flame Azalea (Rhododendron Calendulaceum)

This is the third in a series of posts in which we will take a look at some of our native North American Rhododendrons.  Rhododendrons (and their happy sub-genus, Azaleas) occur throughout the continent except on the Great Plains, the eastern interior plains (southern Michigan, western Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc.), and all of Mexico other than the mountains of northern Baja California.


"The perfect blossom is a rare thing. You could spend your life looking for one, and it would not be a wasted life."  -Katsumoto, from the Last Samurai.

Azaleas are a subgroup of the Rhododendron genus; they tend to be a bit smaller than their more robust looking cousins, and while they can put on quite the show in flowers, even in nice big bunches of flowers just like their bigger friends, they do not have flower clusters like the full Rhododendrons do.  They also tend to have a different general leaf shape than the familiar long and cold-curling Rhodies.  In North America, the Azaleas can be found everywhere from the usual mountain haunts to well into warmer, lower reaches near the coasts.  Unlike the Rhodies, most of which here tend to be evergreen, Azaleas in North America tend to be on the deciduous side.  We have 16 native species in North America, many of which can be found in the Appalachians.

One such species is the marvelous Flame Azalea (Rhododendron Calendulaceum), which has beautiful flowers that pull off some sort of heavenly combination of orange, red, and yellow.  Orange seems to be the most prevalent color in the wild population, but cultivators have managed to squeeze out brilliant selections from the neighboring colors of the rainbow to the degree that the Flames probably have as many garden children out there as most other Azaleas or Rhodies, even giving the Catawba descendants a run for their plant money.  While searching for wild type Flames at various nurseries, I have seen far more for sale than any other North American Rhododendrons or Azaleas.  And why not?  They are an incredibly beautiful flower that brings a real show of fiery color the garden.

All of these pictures of are of the same plant at milepost 361.2 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Glassmine Falls overlook.

Naturally, I just had to find one growing wild.  To be honest, I really had no idea they even existed until I was researching the genus two years ago, and ever since then I have been consumed with trying to find some wild Flames.  I knew I could easily find Catawbas and Rosebays, as their locations and bloom peaks are well documented, but for some reason the same has not been my experience of trying to find Flames.  So it was that when I took my recent botanical pilgrimage to the center of Rhodo heaven, well, even the majesty of Roan could not give pause to the hunt.  It turns out I was largely barking up the wrong tree.

The Flames are sort of in between the needs of the Catawbas and the Rosebays when it comes to elevation and exposure.  Like the Rosebays, they seem to thrive best under some amount of shade, yet they are also more than happy with a few hours of direct sunlight.  As such, they can be found on balds, especially the ultimate place to find them, Gregory Bald (which I did not find out about until I was leaving the Smokies), but they can also be found along slightly open areas in the forest understory.  I found a decent number along the Blue Ridge Parkway growing like this, mainly between Mt. Mitchell and Asheville, but like the Catawbas at Craggy Gardens, they were pretty much mostly done blooming by the third week of June at such altitudes higher than 4,000 feet but less than 5,500 feet.  In some places, they formed a decent patch of orange, but impatient motorists made stopping a pretty nasty prospect.  If you manage to hit the right flowering time for certain altitudes (they apparently can handle much lower elevations) it is likely that you will see a bunch more orange.  I was fortunate enough to find one growing half in the sun and half in the shade at the Glassmine Falls overlook.

For this reason I don't have many pictures of them, but the one I did find was a pretty nice specimen.

It was all alone, surrounded by a bunch of American Mountain Ash (Sorbus Americana), a pair of species that looked really nice and lush together.  As you can see, it (and the others I could not stop for) tends to be a bit more fragile looking than the Rhododendrons.  Flames are pretty delicate looking, but they still have nice globes of flowers (even if they only produce one flower per stem) and decent, somewhat glossy leaves.  I would still go so far as to call Flames such as this one a small tree rather than a shrub, because it was pushing twenty feet.  Among the Ash trees, it looked to be as much a part as the canopy as they did.  Elsewhere, especially among the maples and beech, they tended to function more like a second canopy just as the Rosebays do.  I hope to some day make it to Gregory or a similar bald to see them in their open habitat.

Just as Catawbas are a good sign, even an indicator, if you will, that one is close to if not decidedly in the Southern Appalachians, Flames for the southbound mountaineer are a mark that one has progressed at least as far south as the Central Appalachians.  They can be found infrequently in Ohio, and have been reported up in New York, although Pennsylvania claims they have been extirpated.  Like another showy plant that pops up in Ohio, the Crossvine (Bignonia Capreolata), the Flames look like they belong at the edge of the subtropical world.  I suspect that like the Rosebay, they might have once been a bit more common in the northern reaches, and probably got too much attention as a thing of beauty and thus been forcibly transformed into a hopeful garden dream, but their particular forest associations and preferences of habit leave me thinking they are not as northern in nature as their big leaf cousins. 

Rhododendrons: Rosebay Rhododendron (Rhododendron Maximum)

This is the second in a series of posts in which we will take a look at some of our native North American Rhododendrons.  Rhododendrons (and their happy sub-genus, Azaleas) occur throughout the continent except on the Great Plains, the eastern interior plains (southern Michigan, western Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc.), and all of Mexico other than the mountains of northern Baja California.

While I maintain that Catawba Rhododendrons are amazingly beautiful and something that every true plant lover should make a pilgrimage to see at least once, the Rosebays have a special place in my heart.  They grow all the way up to Quebec and Nova Scotia and might have once covered more territory in Ontario.  For a broadleaved evergreen, they laugh at the face of winter cold, more so than even the mountain-top hugging Catawbas, but they also have limitations.  Like the domestic cultivars of the genus popular in gardens, the Rosebay is not really fond of the hot sun of the afternoon.  They also don't tend to get a lot of attention from gardeners outside of their home region of the Appalachians, which is a shame because they can be every bit as impressive in flower and scale as their Catawba cultivar cousins.  Like the Catawba, they are properly considered a tree, having every bit the stature of one.

Great Smokey Mountains National Park, alongside the Newfound Gap Road along the Oconaluftee River in North Carolina.

That said, it tends to take on a bit more delicate of a branching structure than the mighty Catawbas.

The slender trunks of the Rosebay stand out in individual specimens.  This one was found at Cumberland Gap National Historic Park in Kentucky, along the Pinnacle Overlook road.

Like the Catawbas, it can and often does form pretty impressive forests in its own right.

Along the Oconaluftee River in North Carolina.

The difference here, however, is that they don't like the same degree of exposure that the bald species do.  This probably owes to the fact that they are a more intermediate elevation rhododendron, which in the southern portion means that summer brings much warmer temperatures, and anywhere in its range means comparatively less available moisture for the plants.  As a result, one will find Rosebays among the forests, where they can even form a secondary canopy in places that they tend to dominate.  In the southern Appalachians, especially in the Smokies and along the Blue Ridge, they really do dominate, perhaps even to the exclusion of other plant life on the forest floor, an invasive native if you will.  

Along the Blue Ridge Parkway, somewhere between Spruce Pine, NC and Mt. Mitchell.

Same as above.

Still, they do form a lovely understory, and fit in in a variety of surroundings, be they drier forests of oak and pine, where they are less common, and moister, northern forests of beech, maples, and hemlocks, where they can found at home both in the central and northern Appalachians and the Cove Forests of the southern Appalachians which duplicate these conditions in an otherwise much warmer setting.

A cove forest, but I don't recall where exactly.

They seem to perform the best, or at least occur almost without fail, along streams, especially in forests of Hemlock and associated trees.  Here they help to make for an incredible lushness in a darker green setting and reach proportions of size that put the Catawbas to shame.

Along the Oconaluftee River in North Carolina, in Great Smokey Mountains National Park.

Same place as above.  That Rosebay in the left background up there was half the size of some pretty decent trees, well over 30 feet tall.

And speaking of size, they are not called Rhododendron Maximum as a joke.  Their leaves are the biggest of any Rhododendron in the world.  They can usually be identified by these long, relatively narrow leaves even when not in flower.  Herein also lies their main attraction for this particular gardener: huge evergreen leaves that can take northern winters.

Same location as above.

And yes, they flower as well as a Catawba does, in the same big globe clusters, albeit sometimes not always at once, and not necessarily as prolifically.  They also take their time flowering, flowering as early in the southern ranges as March and continuing up into August pretty much everywhere.

These first two were taken off the same plant, again along the Oconaluftee River in North Carolina in that amazing National Park.

This one was found at Cumberland Gap National Historic Park in Kentucky, again along the Pinnacle Overlook road.

All in all, a nice, if not as dramatically special Rhododendron that the Catawba is.  They certainly are more common, and in some places it was hard to miss them.  I have yet to find some of their natural populations further north, where they do thin out a bit more in comparison to the thickets of the south, but they are pretty common as escapes from cultivation, and they can even get weedy in character as they like to take advantage of disturbed areas, something odd for a plant that likes being cool, moist, and shaded.  

A chance meeting near a highway widening project, where land looks to have been opened for some time, along Gap Creek Road near Elizabethton, Tennessee. 

This was the canopy above those Rosebays, which this far south means drier conditions than they would normally frequent.  Eastern White Pines (Pinus Strobus) are a true northern species, but down here they seem to also make a lower-middle elevation home among the dry and hot conditions favored by oaks.  I would figure sand would have something to do with it.

One can find tons and tons of them along I-80 in Pennsylvania, especially on the stretch between I-81 and I-476:

Many more where this came from.  Sorry for the blur.  This was in the thirties in February, and they did not really look overly concerned about the cold.

To return to the White Pine picture for some closing comments, I have to wonder about just how widespread these things used to be.  Current botanical thinking is that they are opportunists that have taken advantage of artificial changes brought by humans in modern forest settings, akin to how the Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus Virginiana) is more prevalent than it once was.  While I don't argue with the evidence that backs up this line of thinking, because they really do tend to be opportunistic for a Rhododendron, the evidence also focuses on disturbed conditions, and in some decent growth forests they still do form an integral part of the scenery.

My thinking is, owing especially to their tolerances and favored conditions (I mean come on, they can handle cold just fine and they can pop out of rock hillside soil like its made of Miracle Gro), they were perhaps once a feature of forests in Ontario and decently into the Canadian Shield.  They do grow in upstate New York and Quebec, including parts of the Adirondacks and even Erie County, where urban development in Buffalo has probably removed a bunch of the wild population (I would looooove to find some if anyone knows of any wild ones there).  I could imagine that perhaps once, along with maybe Prickly Pear Cacti, grew happily in the sands of eastern Ontario below towering White Pines.  Sure, they might colonize disturbed areas bearing such conditions, but they are no stranger to somewhat dry pine lands, as this particular part of Connecticut demonstrates:

The Most Unusual Natural Area of Connecticut

Oh, and they are also movie stars, as far as plants go.  You can see a few flowering ones in the woods during the opening running scene in Last of the Mohicans!

Tomorrow we shall come across something a little different, an azalea!

Rhododendrons: Catawba Rhododendron (Rhododenron Catawbiense).

This is the first in a series of posts in which we will take a look at some of our native North American Rhododendrons.  Rhododendrons (and their happy sub-genus, Azaleas) occur throughout the continent except on the Great Plains, the eastern interior plains (southern Michigan, western Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc.), and all of Mexico other than the mountains of northern Baja California.

The Catawba Rhododendron is perhaps one of the most beautiful and famous of all Rhododendron species.  It was triumphantly paraded around to wealthy plant hungry patrons in both the New and Old Worlds, and then cross bred with just about any other Rhododendron that would allow for it.  Many of the most beautiful and vibrant species in cultivation today owe their primal botanical existence to the Catawba.  Many are hybrids that have been crossed with Himalayan or Black Sea species, while many others are cultivars of the original.  Most of these children of the original grow in habitats far removed from their mother groves, often forced instead to dwell in shade instead of the open sunny spots they are proper to.  Don't feel bad for them though, as they make their tenders irrigate them and probably laugh (however plants laugh) when they see gardeners struggle to acidify their soil to their liking.

It is a lovely tree, and I say that with certainty, as it can grow to fantastic proportions beyond the range of most shrubs.

Roan

Roan

Roan

It certainly has a trunk and branch structure worthy of being called a tree.  One of the most amazing things to do in a Rhododendron bald is to actually walk into and under the canopy and see the underlying "bones" of the heath forest.

Roan, albeit it gets really awesome to do this at Craggy Gardens, where the immensity of the older plants just swallows the traveler whole.

Of course, the real stars of the show would be the flowers:

Roan, and Roan for the next six.  Seriously, go to Roan.

Even when just getting ready to bloom they look pretty nice.

That said, the leaves are pretty amazing, too.  They are stay green and alive on the trees even in the harsh points of winter, where they roll up and close tighter to conserve moisture.  The leaves are not particularly big, at least not as big as tomorrow's featured Rhododendron, the Rosebay, but they can get up to about six inches or so.  They are a lovely deep green, not too fancy, but bearing an elegant simplicity.  They mostly stand somewhat erect from the plants, although some droop, and in the winter they do so while tightly rolled.  Part of their appeal to this particular northern gardener is that they are one of the few large plants that do stay green year round in a colder climate, learning perhaps from the spruces that being able to photosynthesize once things head into the upper fifties is pretty advantageous in a land where the mercury takes its sweet time getting there.  They also don't have to mess around with losing and expending too many nutrients to keep shedding and growing new leaves so often, another advantage in a place where the soil is far from garden rich.

 In our last post we explored some of the finest natural settings for the Catawba, namely Roan Summit and it surrounding ridges. 

Roan

More Roan

We explored how it grows on the open, grassy balds, in some places almost dominating the scene, as it does on some places at Roan, and more so at, well, "heath balds" like Craggy Gardens:

It's the shorter looking lighter green stuff.  I know, I know, it would be easier to see in flower, but it was done doing so this "low", a mere 5,500 feet.

In such places, it can form a forest unto itself, as at Craggy Gardens:

And yet in other places content to grow as islands of floral ornament amongst the grasses, sedges, and other fun high-altitude Appalachian stuff.

Roan

Roan

It also sticks around down as far as a mere 200 feet in parts of North Carolina, but it seems to like the conditions past 4500 feet the best.  Down past the spruces and firs, where the deciduous forest begins to dominate, a few decent sized specimens grow among the leaf-shedders:

Not sure where, probably along the Blue Ridge Parkway between Craggy Gardens and Mt. Mitchell, but if you were wondering what those awesome other trees are, they would be American Mountain Ash (Sorbus Americana).

Off of the road to Mt. Mitchell, around 5,200 feet.

But they get fairly common and just really tend to stand out among the spruces.  While not as prolific or large among the conifers as they are alone on the open balds, the Catawbas seem to be an integral element of the spruce-fir forests.

Just below the summit of Mt. Mitchell, probably about 6,500 feet up at this location.  And yes, that is another American Mountain Ash, a tree at home both with the leaf-shedders and evergreens. 

That said, they can definitely handle the dark shade of such places, which is not surprising from a plant that can handle some decent winter chills of as low as -34F and practically grow out of rocks:

Rhododendron Catawbiense, v. "Chandelier".  Cultivar made by God.

On the slopes of Mt. Mitchell.  I think this was closer to 6,200 feet.

For the most part, they do indeed have to put up with cold, or at least coolness.  Their peak performance happens in areas that never really break 70F and feature January days akin to what one would find in Detroit or Buffalo.  Like many spruces and other "mountain" vegetation, it seems to do well in such places, but it needs some of the comforts of home; it can't take low elevation baking summer sun, and it definitely needs an acidic soil like its spruce-needle laden mountain turf.  Its moderate to low temperature preferences, along with soil needs and forest associations have long made me wonder why this or most Rhododendrons do not range further north into the Canadian Appalachians and Laurentians.  Perhaps it is because the northern winters are much more severe than the relatively wetter and warmer southern high-altitude Appalachians, and that is pretty much where the Catawbas stay, disappearing from sight largely in northern Virginia. 

One thing is certain, however, and that is that they and their children are extremely popular and have found their way into many gardens, even in alkaline Michigan gardens! 

Roan!

To see them in the wild, head to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Roan Mountain, Mt. Mitchell, Craggy Gardens, or many other 4500 foot + areas in that general region of the world.  To see them bloom, the second week of June is good for elevations lower than 5,500 feet, and the third week better for those above.