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Swamp Azalea

Rhododendron viscosum

Swamp azalea is the last native azalea to flower each season, opening in early summer once every other rhododendron in the woods has finished. The flowers are white to pale pink, narrow-tubed and coated in sticky glandular hairs, and they carry an intense clove-and-spice fragrance strong enough to find the plant by scent before you see it. That long tube suits sphinx moths and swallowtails, which can reach the nectar where shorter-tongued insects cannot. It is a wetland shrub in earnest, growing in seeps, bog margins and swamp edges, and it wants soil that stays wet and strongly acidic — it will not take limey or well-drained ground. It suckers slowly into a loose open colony rather than a dense mass, and its leaves turn a soft bronze in fall.

Family

Ericaceae

Type

shrub

Lifespan

perennial

Height

3–5 ft

Spacing

3–5 ft apart

Light

part shade

Soil moisture

wet

Soil pH

acidic, neutral

Bloom

May, June, July, August

Bloom colors

white, pink

Wildlife value

pollinators, butterflies, mammals, larval host

Caterpillar hosts

~51 butterfly & moth species

Landscape uses

naturalizing, rain garden

Native states

AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, LA, MA, MD, ME, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WV