Few native shrubs stage their pollination as theatrically as the mountain laurels. Each cupped flower holds ten stamens cocked back into little pockets in the petals, spring-loaded, and when a bee stumbles in the filaments snap forward and dust the visitor with pollen. The show fires once per flower and then falls quiet. Linnaeus named the genus Kalmia for Pehr Kalm, the Swedish naturalist who botanized eastern North America in the years around 1750.

These are broadleaf evergreens of the heath family, kin to rhododendron and blueberry, and they want the same cool, acid, well-drained ground. Kalmia latifolia, the mountain laurel, carries whole populations of patterned and banded flowers; Kalmia angustifolia, the sheep laurel, runs smaller and looser. One honest caution comes with the beauty: every part of a laurel is toxic if eaten, so site the plants away from grazing livestock and small children, and enjoy the flowers at the height laurels do best, which is eye level and up.