Remember less is more: the less text you enter, or the fewer azalea characteristics you choose from the menus, the more azaleas you will find. A good strategy is to enter the least text or choose the fewest characteristics you think will find the azaleas you want, and then pick the azaleas with the right names or the right characteristics from the list it shows you. That is more satisfying and usually faster than trying to guess at the full name or all of the characteristics, and then having to repeat the search because it returned no results, or it missed the one you really wanted.

This search uses a number of dropdown menus to specify the characteristics of the azalea you are trying to identify. All of the menus act the same:

• press on the menu to show all the entries, drag to select the entry you want, and release the mouse button to choose that entry;
• an any entry means that characteristic will not be used in the search - in other words, azaleas with that characteristic will not be excluded from the results

The bloom time menu shows relative bloom times for azaleas. The actual dates vary due to latitude. In middle latitudes of the United States such as the Washington DC area, the periods mean:

• very early = before March 15
• early = between March 15 and April 15
• early midseason = between April 15 and May 1
• midseason = between May 1 and May 15
• late midseason = between May 15 and June 1
• late = between June 1 and July 1
• very late = after July 1

The data enter help page describes each of the characteristics in detail, along with a glossary of the terms used in the menus.

The last four search fields work in menu/text entry pairs to search the text entry fields:

• choose any one or all of the other fields to search, and enter the text to search for into the text box to its right (example - Kehr to find all azaleas with Kehr in the chosen other field or fields); and/or
• choose any one or all of the name fields to search, and enter the text to search for into the text box to its right (example - vaseyi to find all azaleas with vaseyi in the chosen name field or fields).

search controls
Use these menus to control the search in several ways.

The precision menu sets the degree of precision for the menus marked with a ± sign. It can expand those other menu entries to search for the next 1, 2 or 3 entries above and below your chosen entries, rather than searching only for exact matches on those menu choices.

The missing data menu includes or excludes azaleas from the search results if the database has no data for your chosen characteristics. Set it to exclude if no data to only show exact matches. Set it to include if no data to also show those azaleas with unknown contents (no data) for your chosen characteristics.

The database menu lets you choose which database(s) to search. The standard database contains azaleas which have been reviewed and are known to be as correct as possible. The pending database contains azaleas which have been entered since the last review.

search results
The results of the search are shown as a list of the azaleas matching your search criteria, with its name and a few other characteristics such as bloom color and bloom time. Clicking the name of an azalea in the list then shows all of its information contained in the database.

Azalea names in the search results are shown without the Rhododendron genus name. Cultivar names are shown with enclosing apostrophes and with initial capital letters, such as 'Bright Eyes'. Species are shown without apostrophes and with initial lowercase letters, such as vaseyi.

Links on the list of search results let you format the information for printing on 1'' x 7'' plant labels, or for use in a spreadsheet or wordprocessing program, or to meet your unique needs.