Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters

Mr. Madison & myself are so far on the tour we had projected ... we were more pleased however with the botanical objects which continually presented themselves. those either unknown or rare in Virginia were the Sugar maple in vast abundance, the Thuya, silver fir, White pine, Pitch pine, Spruce pine, a shrub with decumbent stems which they call Junaper, an Azalea very different from the Nudiflora, with very large clusters of flowers, more thickly set on the branches, of a deeper red & high pink-fragrance. it is the richest shrub I have seen; the honey suckle of the gardens growing wild on the banks of Lake George, the paper birch, an Aspen with a velvet leaf, a shrub willow with downy catkins, a wild gooseberry, the wild cherry with the single fruit (not the bunch cherry), strawberries in abundance.