Kalmia angustifolia

Plant Characteristics

Cultivation

Features:	✓	flowers
Flower features:	❀	pink

Scientific Names

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Kalmia angustifolia (Sheep-laurel) is a flowering plant in the family Ericaceae, which is often used like an ornamental plant. It has attractive small, deep crimson-pink flowers that occur early summer. The low shrub, a native plant of North America, may be only six inches high, or it may attain three feet. The narrow evergreen leaves, pale on the underside, have a tendency to form groups of threes, standing upright when newly put forth, but bent downward with the weight of age. A peculiarity of the plant is that clusters of leaves usually terminate the woody stem, for the flowers grow in whorls or in clusters at the side of it below.

It is also known as Lamb-kill, Wicky, Calf-kill, Sheep-poison, Narrow-leaved Laurel and Sheep Laurel, its folk-names testifying chiefly to the plant's toxicity in pasture.

Read about Kalmia angustifolia in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture

Kalmia angustifolia, linn. sheep-laurel. lambkill. wicky. Shrub, to 3 ft.: lvs. petioled, usually oblong, obtuse, light green above, pale beneath, 1-2 ½ in. long: corymb lateral, many-fld., compound or simple; fls. 1 1/3— ½ in. across, purple or crimson; sepals ovate, glandular. June, July. From Newfoundland and Hudson Bay to Ga. B.M. 331. BM. 445.—There are varieties with light purple fls., var. rosea, Hort.; with crimson fls., var. robra, Lodd. (var. hirsuta, voss). L.B.C. 6:502; with white fls., var. Candida, Fern.; with ovate or oval lvs., var. ovata, Pursh, and of dwarf habit, var. pumila, Bosse (var. nana, Hort.). The above text is from the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture. It may be out of date, but still contains valuable and interesting information which can be incorporated into the remainder of the article. Click on "Collapse" in the header to hide this text.

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References

• Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, by L. H. Bailey, MacMillan Co., 1963

External links

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