Mountain Laurel is native Eastern United States, and lies from southern Maine south to northern Florida, and west to Indiana and Louisiana. It is also called Kalmia latifolia and spoonwood.

 

The plant grows to a height of 5-15 feet. It is an evergreen shrub growing naturally found on rocky slopes and mountainous forest areas. The plant often grows in large thickets, covering large areas of forest floor.

 

Mountain laurel flowers vary from pure white to pink, with variable amounts of red markings. The leaves are 3-12 cm long and 1-4 cm wide. Its flowers are star-shaped, and grow at the end of the stem (called terminal clusters....terminal means "the end"). Long filaments of the stamen are bent over and latched into a tiny dimple in the flower...like a mouse trap. When a bee steps on the petal the spring is released and "whap", the stamen zips out and snaps pollen all over the insect.

 

Mountain Laurel has a dark brown tinged with red, furrowed and scaly bark. Branches are at first light reddish green, downy, later smooth, red green and shining, finally all a bright red brown. The wood is brown tinged with red; heavy, hard, rather brittle, close-grained. Leaf-buds are naked, forming in midsummer in the axils of leaves just below those from which the clusters of flower-buds are produced by which they are almost covered. The tip of the branch dies when the buds are formed. The fruit of Mountain Laurel is a woody capsule, many seeded, depressed-globular, slightly five-lobed, five-celled, five-valve. It is crowned with the persistent style, surrounded at base by the persistent calyx, covered with viscid hairs.

 

In New England the Mountain Laurel is usually a shrub. Down south in the mountains of North and South Carolina it can grow to be a small tree. It is tolerant of many conditions.

 

The best flowering time is May to July. When planting them do not plant too deeply. Make sure the mountain laurel plant's "crown" (where its trunk meets its roots) is not buried. Buried crowns will suffer from rot, and your shrub will die. Mountain laurel plants rarely need to be pruned, although pinching off the seed heads after blooming time is over seems to promote better flowering for the next season.

 

The Native Americans used the wood for spoons. The wood carves nicely and the fine grain takes a good polish. When in full bloom it is of surpassing beauty and its bright evergreen leaves make it conspicuous at any time.

 

Did you know?

·        Mountain laurel is the state flower of Connecticut.

·        It is the state flower of Pennsylvania's, as enacted by the General Assembly on May 5, 1933.

·        The man who invented the naming system for plants, Carl Linnaeus, called this one Kalmia after his student Peter Kalm.