in botany: A genus of the monogynia order, belonging to the decandra clas of plants; and in the natural method ranking under the 18th order, Bicornes. The calyx is quinquepartite; the corolla salver-shaped, formed with five nectariferous horns on the under or outer side; the capsule quinquilocular. Of this genus there are two species, viz.

1. The latifolia, a most beautiful shrub, which rises usually to the height of five or six feet, and sometimes twice that height in its native places. The stems of some are as big as the smallest of a man's legs, though generally they are smaller, and covered with a brown rough bark. The wood is very close grained, heavy, and hard like box. The limbs in general are crooked, and grow irregular; but are thick-clothed with stiff smooth leaves of a shining bright green. The flowers grow in bunches on the tops of the branches to footstalks of three inches long: they are white, stained with purplish red, consisting of one leaf in form of a cup divided at the verge into five sections: in the middle is a stylus and 12 stamens; which, when the flower first opens, appear lying close to the sides of the cup at equal distances, their apices being lodged in ten little hollow cells, which being prominent on the outside, appear as so many little tubercles. The flowers are succeeded by small round capsules; which when ripe open in five parts, and discharge their small dust like seeds. This Kalmia plant is a native of Carolina, Virginia, and other parts of the northern continent of America; yet are not common, but are found only in particular places: they grow on rocks hanging over rivulets and running streams, and on the sides of barren hills. They blossom in May, and continue in flower the greatest part of the summer. The noxious qualities of this elegant plant lessen that esteem which its beauty claims: for although deer feed on its green leaves with impunity, yet when cattle and sheep, by severe winters deprived of better food, feed on the leaves of these plants, a great many of them die annually.

2. The angustifolia, rises to the height of about 16 feet, producing ever-green leaves in shape like the lauro-cerasus, but small, and of a shining dark green. The flowers grow in clusters, the buds of which appear in autumn wrapped up in a conic scaly perianthium, on which is lodged a viscid matter, which protects them from the severe cold in winter. These buds dilating in the following spring, break forth into twenty or more monopetalous flowers divided into five segments, and set singly on pedicles half an inch long. These flowers, when blown, appear white; but on a near view are of a faint bluish-colour, which as the flower decays grow paler. One of the five petals is longer and more concave than the rest, and is blended with purple, green, and yellow specks, being a viscid matter on the extremities of very fine hairs. The convex side of the same petal is also speckled with yellowish green. The pointal rises from the centre of the flower, and has its head adorned with scarlet, and surrounded by 10 stamina, whereof three are long and seven short, whose farina issues out at a small round hole at its top. This elegant tree adorns the western and remote parts of Pennsylvania, always growing in the most fertile soil, or on the rocky declivities of hills and river-banks, in shady moist places.