Rhodora

Rhodora (journal)

Rhodora is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the New England Botanical Club. It is issued four times a year and was established in 1899. According to the Journal Citation Reports, its 2009 impact factor is 0.200. The editor-in-chief is Elizabeth Farnsworth .-External links:*...

 is also the name of the journal of the New England Botanical Club

Rhodora is a section of subgenus Pentanthera in the genus Rhododendron

Rhododendron

Rhododendron is a genus of over 1 000 species of woody plants in the heath family, most with showy flowers...

. It comprises two species, both deciduous

Deciduous

Deciduous means "falling off at maturity" or "tending to fall off", and is typically used in reference to trees or shrubs that lose their leaves seasonally, and to the shedding of other plant structures such as petals after flowering or fruit when ripe...

 shrub

Shrub

A shrub or bush is distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and shorter height, usually under 5–6 m tall. A large number of plants may become either shrubs or trees, depending on the growing conditions they experience...

s native to eastern North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

:

• Rhododendron canadense
  Rhododendron canadense
  Rhododendron canadense is a deciduous flowering shrub that is native to northeastern North America. The wild distribution of the rhodora begins at its easternmost extreme in Canada in Labrador and extends into eastern Ontario and the United States, where it has its most famous home in New England...
  
  
• Rhododendron vaseyi

The section is closely related to sect. Pentanthera

Pentanthera (section)

Rhododendron sect. Pentanthera is a section of subgenus Pentanthera in the genus Rhododendron. It comprises 15-16 species of deciduous shrubs native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere.It includes two subsections:* Pentathera...

, differing from it in the flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...

 corolla having only three lobes, rather than five, the upper three lobes of sect. Pentanthera being joined into a single three-lipped lobe in sect. Rhodora. This distinct floral structure resulted in its formerly being treated as a distinct genus, but treating it as such results in the remainder of the genus Rhododendron being paraphyletic

Paraphyly

A group of taxa is said to be paraphyletic if the group consists of all the descendants of a hypothetical closest common ancestor minus one or more monophyletic groups of descendants...

.

Cultural references

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

wrote in his poem, Rhodora: on being asked, whence is the flower ?

Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky

Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,

Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.