Piedmont Azalea

Piedmont Azalea is the most common and widespread native azalea of the southeastern United States, blooming in early spring before or with leaf emergence along streams, swamps, and moist woodlands across the coastal plain and piedmont. Its white to pale pink flowers are sweetly fragrant — sometimes intensely so — and the corolla tubes are covered in sticky, glandular hairs that exclude nectar thieves. It is a characteristic plant of the southern bottomland forest understory and often grows in large colonies from rhizome spread. It is sometimes called 'Wild Honeysuckle' for its fragrance.