Looks like Mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia.

That definitely looks like it! thanks so much!

(Who could cut down a mountain laurel?) geez....

not much experience from me.. since i killed the three i bought years ago ... lol

any issue of a grafted plant cut to the ground.. and now they have common understock???? and... does it matter with MLaurel?

ken

It DOES matter. I counted one nursery offering 17 varieties, 16 of which are way different than the species.
Ostbo's Red and Minuet are my favorites.

Briggs grows millions of them from tissue culture. Don't think grafted stock is likely to be encountered.

So if isn't grafted it isn't a hybrid?

thanks for the info - I'm a newbie.

So if isn't grafted it isn't a hybrid?

No, you can have a hybrid that isn't a graft. Graft means that one plant was physically attached to another (usually because the base is hardier or has some desirable trait). So you actually have two different plants joined together.

A hybrid means that two non-identical plants (often two different species, but it doesn't have to be and there are even inter-species hybrids) were cross-pollinated to produce seedlings of mixed parentage. From those seedlings, a superior plant is chosen and from that point, future plants are reproduced from cuttings to grow new, but identical, plants.

You can tell if a plant is a hybrid by the name (unless it was a hybrid between two plants of the same species, that's harder to recognize but isn't necessary to know if the species is the same, I guess) by the "x" in the name: Cornus x ÂConstellation is a hybrid between Cornus florida and Cornus kousa. Both species names are dropped and an "x" designates the hybrid. 'Constellation' is the chosen cultivar name to represent the seedling that was selected as the best (and it will be propagated by cuttings now to ensure each plant is as good as the first.