. in Tye ere BM ei ba ig Ma * Cornell University Library BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND . THE GIFT OF Henry W. Sage 189i Aa5058... RETURN TO ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY ITHACA, N. Y. Cornell University The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924090116884 ‘00a7 La "sag ‘WOOINOdV£ WOATIAHdIGIONO FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN NOTES ON THE FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN BY CHARLES SPRAGUE SARGENT DIRECTOR OF THE ARNOLD ARBORETUM OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PE 1 eT ~ bien r rae Riersdo Bese BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY Dhe Uiversive Press, Cambridge 1894 & Q\K Copyright, 1894, By CHARLES SPRAGUE SARGENT. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O, Houghton and Company. ( Tue following notes, gathered in the autumn of 1892, during a journey through Hondo and Yezo, were first printed, with the illustrations that accompany them, in “Garden and Forest.” I am indebted to the publishers of that journal for the permission to reprint them in this form. C. S. SARGENT. ARNOLD ARBORETUM, May, 1894. TABLE OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION . : . : 3 Z Tue Maenoria Famity Tue TERNSTREMIA, LINDEN, AND Ruz FAmMILigs Tue Houty, Evonymus, anp BuckTHorN FAMILIES THe Marie Famity Tue SumAcHs AND THE PEA FaMILy Tue Rost Famity THE WitcH-Hazer AND ARALIA FAMILIES Tue Cornets, HoNEYSUCKLES, AND PERSIMMONS, THE STYRAX FAMILY, THE ARBORESCENT MEMBERS OF Toe Hratu Faminy, THE ASHES, AND THEIR ALLIES Tue Lavuret, EvpHorBia, AND Nettie FAMILIES Tut WaLNuts, BrrcHes, ALDERS, AND HorNBEAMS Tus Oaxs, CHESTNUTS, WILLOWS, AND POPLARS Tue CONIFERS ‘ j ; : : . Tue Contrers, II. Tur Economic ASPECTS OF THE JAPANESE FORESTS Page LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. . CERCIDIPHYLLUM JAPONICUM. Hemuock Forest or Lake Yumorto. Maanorra Kopus. MAGNOLIA SALICIFOLIA. MICHELIA COMPRESSA. PP wo to . CERCIDIPHYLLUM JAPONICUM. CERCIDIPHYLLUM JAPONICUM. Tinta MIQueELiaANa. | oon . AcER Mivasel. a i=) . ACER NIKOENSE. a es . GLEDITSIA JAPONICA. = bo . Prunus Maximowiczi1. as oo . Pyrus MIvaset. pare lca . Pyrus TscHoNnoskIl. = OL . DISANTHUS CERCIDIFOLIA. = for) . ACANTHOPANAX RICINIFOLIUM. eS QQ . LINDERA OBTUSILOBA. =F oO . ULMUS CAMPESTRIS. pe ie} . ZELKOVA KEAKI. is) oO . ALNUS JAPONICA. ix) ps . CARPINUS CARPINUS. ix) bo . OstRyYA JAPONICA. bo oo . QUERCUS DENTATA. . AVENUE OF CRYPTOMERIAS AT NIKKO. 25. Hemuock Forest (TsuGa DIVERSIFOLIA), Lake Yumoto. 26. Larix DAHURICA, VAR. JAPONICA. bo ns FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. INTRODUCTION. Many years ago, in one of the most interesting papers: which has been written on the dis- tribution of forests, Professor Asa Gray drew some comparisons between the forests of eastern North America and those of the Japan-Manchurian region of Asia. Here it was shown that, rich as eastern America is in tree species, Japan, and the regions to the north of it, in spite of their comparatively small area, are still richer. Professor ¢ Gray’ s Asiatic region included the four principal Japanese islands, eastern Manchuria, and the adjacent borders of China, while the contrasted American region embraced the territory east of the Mississippi River, but excluded the extreme southern point of Florida, inhabited by some sixty tropical trees which belong to the West Indian rather than to the true North American flora. In the Japan- Manchurian region he found 168 trees divided among sixty-six genera, and in eastern America 155 trees in sixty-six genera, the enumeration in both cases being confined “to timber-trees, or such as attain in the most favorable localities to a size which gives them a clear title to the arboreous rank.” In the Japanese enumeration were included, however, a number of trees which are not indigenous to Japan, but which, as we now know, were long ago brought into the empire from China and Corea, like most of the plants cultivated by the Japanese. arly __ European travelers in Japan, like Thunberg and Siebold, who were unable to penetrate far into the interior, finding a number of plants common in cultivation, naturally believed them to be indigenous, and several Chinese plants were first described from individuals cultivated in Japanese gardens. Later writers” on the Japanese flora have generally followed the example of the early travelers, and included these plants in the flora of Japan. Indeed, it is only very recently that it has been possible to travel freely in all parts of the empire, and to study ‘satisfactorily the character and distribution of its flora. The list of Chinese and Corean trees cultivated in Japan, and usually enumerated in Floras of the empire, includes Magnolia conspicua, Magnolia parvifolia, Magnolia Watsoni, Sterculia platinifolia, Cedrela Sinensis, Zizyphus vulgaris, Kelreuteria paniculata, Sapindus Mukorosi, Acer trifidum, Rhus vernicifera, Sophora Japonica,’ Prunus Mume, Pyrus Sinensis, Crategus cuneata, Eriobotrya Japonica, Liquidambar Formosana (Maximowiczii), Cornus officinalis, 1 Forest Geography and Archzology, Scientific Papers, ii. 204. through the entire country, especially in the foliaceous for- ests of the north.” He had evidently confounded Sophora 2 See Franchet & Savatier, Enum. Pl. Jap.— Forbes & Hemsley, Jour. Linn. Soc., xxiii. and xxvi. 8 Even Rein (The Industries of Japan), usually a most eareful observer, states that Sophora Japonica is “scattered with Maackia, a gommon and widely spread tree, especially in Yezo. Sophora, which is only seen occasionally in gar- dens, does not appear to be a particularly popular plant with the Japanese. 2 _ FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. Diospyros Kaki, and probably Diospyros Lotus, Chionanthus retusa, Paulownia imperialis, Catalpa ovata, Lindera strychnifolia, Ulmus parvifolia, Thuja orientalis, Ginkgo biloba, Podo- carpus Nageia, Podocarpus macrophylla, and Pinus Koraiensis. If these species,’ twenty-nine in number, are deducted from Professor Gray’s enumeration, there will remain 139 species in fifty-three genera, or a smaller number of both genera and species than he credited to eastern America. This, however, does not alter the fact that the Japanese region for its area is unsur- passed in the number of trees which inhabit its forests. Indeed, the superiority of the forests of Japan in the number of their arborescent species over those of every other temperate region, eastern North America included, in proportion to \/ their area, has certainly never been fully stated, as perhaps I shall be able to show, having made two years ago a somewhat extended journey through the northern and central islands, undertaken for the purpose of studying Japanese trees in their relations to those of North America. The case, perhaps, can best be stated by following Professor Gray’s method, and making a new census of the inhabitants of the Japan-Manchurian forests and of those of eastern America, as these two regions extend through nearly the same degrees of latitude, and possess somewhat similar climates, although Japan has the advantage of a more equally distributed rainfall and a more equable climate, and offers a far more broken surfacetthan eastern America, with mountains twice the height of any of the Appalachian peaks. As the true Atlantic forest extends west to the eastern rim of the mid-continental plateau, the American region, for purposes of proper comparison, may be extended to the western limit of the Atlantic tree-growth, although this will add to the American side of the account a few genera and species of Texas, like Kceberlinia, Ungnadia, Parkinsonia, Prosopis, Acacia, Chilopsis, and Pithecolobium, which Professor Gray did not include in the enumeration from which his deductions were made. The south Florida species are again omitted, and those plants which grow up with a single stem will be considered trees. In eastern North America, that is in the whole region north of Mexico and east of the treeless plateau of the centre of the continent, but exclusive of south Florida, 225 species of trees, divided among 134 genera, are now known. The Japan-Manchurian region includes eastern Manchuria, the Kurile ' Islands, Saghalin, and the four great Japanese islands, but for our purpose does not include J the Loochoo group, which, although it forms a part of the Japanese empire politically, is tropical and subtropical in the character of its vegetation, which, moreover, is still imperfectly understood. In this narrow eastern border of Asia there are now known 241 trees divided among ninety-nine genera. The extra Japanese portion of the reyion contributes but little to the enumeration. In Saghalin, Fr. Schmidt? found only three trees which do not inhabit Yezo, and in Manchuria, according to Maximowicz* and Schmidt,* there are only eighteen 1 A number of shrubs, familiar in western gardens, and _ kerrioides, Cercis Chinensis, Enkianthus Japonicus, Forsy- usually supposed to be Japanese from the fact that they were _ thia suspensa, Olea fragrans, Tecoma grandiflora, Daphne first known to Europeans in Japan, or were first sent from Genkwa,Edgeworthia papyrifera, and Wikstremia Japonica. that country, are also Chinese or Corean, and in Japan are Nandina domestica, the most universally cultivated orna- only found in gardens or in the neighborhood of habitations. mental plant in Japan, is probably not a Japanese plant, Among them are Clematis patens, Magnolia stellata, Mag- although Rein states that it grows wild in Shikoku. nolia obovata, Berberis Japonica, Citrus Japonica, Prunus 2 Reisen in Amurland. tomentosa, Prunus Japonica, Spirea Thunbergii, Rhodotypos 3 Prim. Fl. Amur. J‘ 4 Reisen in Amurland. e INTRODUCTION. 3 trees which do not also occur in Saghalin or in the northern Japanese islands. In the four islands of Yezo, Hondo, Shikoku, and Kyishi, therefore, we now find 220 trees divided among ninety-nine genera, or only five less than occur in the immense territory which extends from Labrador to the Rio Grande and from the shores of the Atlantic to the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. Neither Cycas revoluta nor Trachycarpus (Chamerops) excelsa is included in the Japanese list, as the best observers appear to agree in thinking that these two familiar plants are not indigenous to J apan proper. I have omitted, moreover, a few doubtful species from the Japan enumeration, like Fagus Japonica, Maximowicz, and Abies umbellata, Mayr, of which I could learn nothing in Japan, so that it is more probable that the number of Japanese trees will be increased than that any addition will be made to the silva of eastern America. The proportion of trees to the whole flora of Japan is remarkable, being about 1 to 10.14, the number of indigenous flowering plants and vascicular eryptogams being not very far from 2,500 species. Still more remarkable is the large proportion of woody plants to the whole flora. In Japan proper there are certainly not less than 325 species of shrubs, or 550 woody plants in all, or one woody plant in every 4.55 of the whole flora, —a much larger percentage than occurs in any part of North America. The aggregation of arborescent species in Japan is, however, the most striking feature in the silva of that country. This is most noticeable in Yezo, where probably more species of trees are growing naturally in a small area than in any other one place outside the tropics, with the exception of. the lower basin of the Ohio River, where, on a few acres in southern Indiana, Professor Robert Ridgway has counted no less than seventy-five arborescent species in thirty-six genera.’ (Near Sapporo, the capital of the island, in ascending a hill which rises only 500 feet above the level of the ocean, I noticed the following trees: Magnolia hypoleuca, Magnolia Kobus, Cercidiphyllum Japonicum, Tilia cordata, Tilia Miqueliana, Phellodendron Amurense, Picrasma ailanthoides, Evonymus Europeus, var. Hamiltonianus, Acer pictum, Acer Japonicum, Acer palmatum, Rhus semialata, Rhus trichocarpa, Maackia Amurensis, Prunus Pseudo-Cerasus, Prunus Ssiori, Pyrus aucuparia, Pyrus Toringo, Pyrus Miyabei, Hydrangea paniculata, Aralia spinosa, var. canescens, Acanthopanax ricinifolium, Acanthopa- nax sciadophylloides, Cornus macrophylla, Syringa Japonica, Fraxinus Mandshurica, Fraxinus longicuspis, Clerodendron trichotomum, Ulmus campestris, Ulmus scabra, var. laciniata, Morus alba, Juglans Sieboldiana, Betula alba, Betula alba, var. Tauschii, Betula alba, var. verrucosa, Betula Ermani, Betula Maximowicziana, Alnus incana, Carpinus cordata, Ostrya Japonica, Quercus crispula, Quercus gosseserrata, Castanea vulgaris, Populus tremula, Picea Ajanensis, Abies Sachalinensis, — forty-six species and varieties. Within five miles of this hill also grow Acer spicatum, var. Kurunduense, Acer Tataricum, var. Ginnala, Styrax Obassia, Aphananthe aspera, Quercus dentata, Quercus glandulifera, Alnus Japonica, Salix subfragilis, Salix Caprea, Salix stipularis, Salix acutifolia, Salix vimimalis, and Populus suaveolans, — in all sixty-two species and varieties, or more than a quarter of all the trees of the empire, which are crowded into an area a few miles square, in the latitude of northern New England, in which, north of Cape Cod, there are only about the same number of trees. 1 See Proc.'U. S. Nat. Mus. 1882, 52.— Garden and Forest, vi. 148. 4 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. A further examination of the trees of the two countries shows that, although the Japan- Manchurian region possesses more arborescent species than eastern America, the silva of the latter is much richer in genera, —one hundred and thirty-four to ninety-nine in Japan- Manchuria. Forty-four genera have arborescent species in the two regions; forty-five genera with Japanese representatives have none in the flora of eastern America, and thirty-eight genera represented in the American flora do not appear in that of Japan. A few genera, five in eastern America and seven in Japan, are represented by trees in one region and by shrubs only in the other. Of endemic arborescent genera the silva of eastern America contains Asimina, Keeberlinia, Cliftonia, Ungnadia, Robinia, Cladrastis, Pinckneya, Oxydendrum, Mohro- dendron, Sassafras, Planera, Toxylon, Leitneria, Hicoria, and Taxodium, fifteen, while in Japan there are only five,— Cercidiphyllum,! Trochodendron, Platycarya, Cryptomeria, and Sciadopitys. Such a comparison between the silvas of eastern America and Japan is interesting as showing the great number of arborescent species inhabiting four small islands. The signifi- cant comparison, however, if it can ever be made, will be between eastern America, as here limited, and all of eastern Asia from the northern limits of tree-growth to the tropics, and from the eastern rim of the Thibetan plateau to the eastern coast of Japan. This would include Corea, practically an unexplored country botanically, especially the northern portions, and all the mountain ranges of western China, a region which, if it is to be judged from the collections made there in recent years, is far richer in trees than Japan itself. It is impossible to discuss with precision or with much satisfaction the distribution of the ligneous plants of the north temperate zone until more is known of western China and of Corea, where may be sought the home of many plants now spread through eastern China and Japan, and where alone outside the tropics the enterprising and industrious collector may now hope to be rewarded with new forms of ligneous vegetation. Travelers in Japan have often insisted on the resemblance between that country and eastern America in the general features of vegetation. But with the exception of Yezo, which is still mostly uninhabited and in a state of nature, and those portions of the other islands which are over 5,000 feet above the level of the ocean, it is difficult to form a sufficiently accurate idea of the general appearance of the original forest-covering of Japan to be able to compare the aspects of its vegetation with those of any other country, for every foot of the lowlands and the mountain valleys of the three southern islands has been cultivated for centuries. And the foothills and low mountains which were once clothed with forests, and could be again, are now covered with coarse herbage, principally Eulalia, and are destitute of trees, except such as have sprung up in sheltered ravines, and have succeeded in escaping the fires which are set every year to burn off the dry grasses. Remoteness, bad roads, and the impossibility of bringing down their timber into the valleys have saved the mountain forests of Japan, which may still be seen, especially between 5,000 and 8,000 feet above the level of the sea, in their natural condition. But these elevated forests are composed of comparatively few species, and if it were not for the plantations of Conifers, which the Japanese for at least twelve centuries, it is said, have been making to supply their workers in wood with material, and for 1 Since this was written I have received through M. M. L. de Vilmorin of Paris seeds of a Cercidiphyllum gathered in the extreme western part of China. : * INTRODUCTION. 5 the trees preserved or planted in the temple grounds in the neighborhood of towns, it would be impossible to obtain any idea at all of many of the Japanese trees. But, fortunately, for nearly two thousand years the priests of Buddha have planted and replanted trees about their temples, which are often surrounded by what now appear to be natural woods, as no tree is ever cut and no attempt is made to clear up the undergrowth. These groves’ are sometimes of considerable extent, and contain noble trees, Japanese and Chinese, which give some idea of what the inhabitants of the forests of Japan were before the land was cleared for agriculture. The floras of Japan and eastern America have, it is true, some curious features in common, and the presence in the two regions of certain types not found elsewhere show their relation- ship. But these plants are usually small, and are rare or grow only on the high mountains. Diphylleia, Buckleya, Epigzea, and Shortia show the common origin of the two floras; but these are rare plants in Japan, as they are in America, with the exception of Epigza, and probably not one traveler in ten thousand has ever seen them, while the chief elements of the forest flora of northern Japan, the only part of the empire where, as has already been said, comparison is possible, — those which all travelers notice, — do not recall America so much, perhaps, as they do Siberia and Europe. The broad-leaved Black Oaks, which form the most distinct and conspicuous feature in all the forests of eastern America, are entirely absent from Japan, and the deciduous-leaved White Oaks, which, in Japan, constitute a large part of the forest-growth of the north, are of the European and not of the American type, with the exception of Quercus dentata, which has no related species in America. The Chestnut Oaks, which are common and conspicuous, both in the northern and southern parts of eastern America, do not occur in Japan, and the Evergreen Oaks, which abound in the southern part of that empire, where they are more common than any other group of trees, are Asiatic and not American in their relationships. Many of our most familiar American trees are absent from the forests of Japan. The Tulip-tree, the Pawpaw or Asimina, the Ptelea or Hop-tree, the Loblolly Bay or Gordonia, the Cyrilla and the Cliftonia, the Plum-trees, which abound here in many forms, the Texas Buckeye (Ungnadia), the Mesquite, the Locusts, the Cladrastis or Virgilia, the Kentucky Coffee-tree or Gymnocladus, the Liquidambar, the Tupelos, the Sourwood or Oxydendrum, the Osage Orange, the Kalmia, the Sassafras, the Persea or Red Bay, the Planera or Water Elm, the Plane-tree, the Black Walnut, the Hickories, and the deciduous Cypress — all common and conspicuous in our forests — are not found in Japan. Crategus, with a dozen species, is one of the features of the forest flora of eastern America, while in Japan the genus is repre- sented by a single species, confined to the northern part of the empire, and nowhere very common. The Japanese Maples, with the exception of Acer pictum, which is not unlike our Sugar Maple, have no close resemblance or relationship with the eastern American species ; the Beech and the Chestnut are European, and not American; the Birches, with one excep- tion, are of the Old World type, as are the Lindens, Ashes, Willows, the Celtis, the Alders, Poplars, and Larches.’ 1 Of the arborescent genera of Japan, thirty are represented in Europe, and all of these, with the exception of Buxus, are also found in eastern America. 6 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. On the other hand, the Japanese will not find in our forests Euptelea and Cercidiphyllum of the Magnolia family, Trochodendron, Idesia, the arborescent Ternstreemiacee (Tern- streemia, Cleyera, Eurya, and Camellia), Phellodendron and Hovenia, Euscaphis, Maackia and Albizzia, Distylium, Acanthopanax, Syringa, many arborescent Lauracee (Cimnamomum, — Machilus and Actinodaphne), which, next to the Evergreen Oaks, are the most distin- | guishing features of the forest flora of southern Japan. Nor will they find the beautiful arborescent Linderas which abound in Japan, while in America the genus is only represented by two unimportant shrubs, the arborescent Euphorbiacee, like Buxus, Daphniphyllum, Aleurites, Mallotus, and Exccecaria, or Zelkova, Aphananthe, Broussonetia, and Debregeasia, or find anything to remind them of Pterocarya and Platycarya, Cryptomeria, Cephalotaxus, and Sciadopitys. The forests of the two regions possess in common Magnolia and Ausculus, which are more abundant in species and individuals in America than in Japan. The Rhuses or Sumachs are very similar in the two regions, and so are the Witch Hazel and the arborescent Aralia. Cornus macrophylla of Japan is only an enlarged Cornus alternifolia of eastern America, and the so-called Flowering Dogwoods of the two countries are not unlike. The Japanese Walnut is very like the American Butternut, while, rather curiously, the Japdnese Thuya and the two Chamecyparis, the Piceas and Abies, resemble species of Pacific North America, a region whose flora has little affinity with that of eastern Asia. Tumion is common to the two regions ; in eastern America it is one of the most local of all our trees, while in Japan it is abundant in the mountainous regions of the central and southern parts of the empire. Apart from the characters which distinguish related genera and species of Japanese trees from their American congeners there are many aspects of vegetation which make the two countries unlike. The number of broad-leaved evergreen trees is much greater in southern Japan than in the southern United States, there being fifty species of these trees in the former, and only twenty in eastern America (exclusive always of southern Florida), and the general aspect of the groves and woods at the sea-level, even in the latitude of Tokyé, is of broad-leaved evergreens. The number of evergreen shrubs in proportion to the entire flora is much greater in Japan, too, than it is in America, and plants of this character grow much farther north in the former than in the latter country. The small number of species of Pinus in Japan, and their scarcity at the north, is in striking contrast to the number and distribution of the species of this genus in eastern America, where there are thirteen species to only five in Japan, including one shrub. In Japan the Hemlock forms continuous and almost unbroken forests of great extent on the mountain-slopes, which are over 5,000 feet above the sea, while in eastern America this tree is rarely found except scattered in small groves or as \ single individuals through the deciduous-leaved forests. On the other hand, Picea and Abies, which in America form immense forests almost to the exclusion of other species, grow, wherever I have seen them in Japan, singly, or, in the case of Abies, in small groves on the lower border of the Hemlock forests or mingled with deciduous-leaved trees. Picea Ajanensis is said, however, to form extensive forests in some parts of western Yezo, and Professor Miyabe informs me that in the extreme northern part of that island there are fine continuous forests of Abies Sachalinensis. In northern Japan and on the high mountains of the central Prate II. ual th al HSM) BWA i we RL y) \y sail "a, : | Nh Tl M) i thm, Nil v Hi ‘& SS HEMLOCK FOREST OF LAKE YUMOTO. ius o. hs LU yi. efi UM Shs, S ° INTRODUCTION. 7 islands, Birches are more abundant than they are in our northern oe and the river banks at the north, like those of northern Europe and Siberia, are lined with arborescent Willows - and Alders, which are rare in eastern America, where these genera are usually represented by shrubs. The illustration on the opposite page (Plate ii.) gives some idea of the general appearance of the great coniferous forests which cover the highlands of central Japan. In the fore- ground, Lake Yumoto, famous for its thermal springs, nestles, 5,000 feet above the sea, among the Nikko Mountains. The forests which rise from the shores of the lake are principally composed of Hemlock (Tsuga diversifolia); ¢ among which are Birch (Betula Ermani), Abies and Picea, Pterocarya, Cercidiphyllum, and the Mountain Ash. In the dense shade by the shores of the lake grow dwarf forms of the Indian Azalea, Elliottia paniculata, our Canadian Bunch Berry (Cornus Canadensis), great masses of Rhododendron Metternichii, which in these forests replaces Rhododendron Catawbiense of the Appalachian Mountains, the dwarf Tlex rugosa, Clethra canescens, here at the upper limits of its distribution, Panax horrida, and the dwarf Blueberries which inhabit mountain-slopes in all northern countries, as well as the ubiquitous Bamboos. The undergrowth which covers the ground beneath the forests in the two regions is so unlike that it must at once attract the attention of the most careless observer. In all the Appalachian region of North America this is composed of a great number of shrubs, chiefly of various species of Vaccinium and Gaylusaccia, of Epigza, wild Roses, Kalmias, dwarf Pyrus and Lycopodiums; in Japan the forest-floor is covered, even high on the mountains, ae in the extreme north, with a continuous, almost impenetrable, mass of dwarf Bamboos of several species, which makes traveling in the woods, except over long-beaten paths and up the beds of streams, practically impossible. These Bamboos, which vary in height from three to six feet in different parts of the country, make the forest-floor monotonous and uninteresting, and prevent the growth of nearly all other under-shrubs, except the most vigorous species. Shrubs, therefore, are mostly driven to the borders of roads and other open places, or to the banks of streams and lakes, where they can obtain sufficient light to enable them to rise above the Bamboos; and it is the abundance of the Bamboo, no doubt, which has developed the climbing habit of many Japanese plants, which are obliged to ascend the trees in search of sun and light, for the Japanese forest is filled with climbing shrubs, which flourish with trop- ical luxuriance. 2 The wild Grape grows in the damp forests of Vor with a vigor and to a size which the American species do not often attain, even in the semitropical climate of the southern Missis- sippi valley. Actinidia arguta climbs into the tops of the tallest trees, and nothing is so un-American or so attracts the attention of the American traveler in Japan as the trunks of trees clothed to the height of sixty or eighty feet with splendid masses of the climbing Hydrangeas (H. petiolaris and Schizophragma), or with the lustrous evergreen foliage of the climbing Evonymus. Wistaria is represented, it is true, in eastern America, but here it is not common or one of the chief features of vegetation as it is in Japan ; and the Ivy, a southern plant only in Japan, and nowhere very common, helps to remind the traveler that he is in the Old and not in the New World. THE MAGNOLIA FAMILY. Tue general character of the composition of the Japanese forests having been briefly traced, I shall now say something of the most important Japanese trees; and, as their botan- ical characters are already pretty well understood and their economic properties are only of secondary interest to the general reader, these remarks will relate principally to their quality from a horticultural point of view. A comparison with allied eastern American species will perhaps be useful; it will, at any rate, show that, while Japan is extremely rich in the number of its tree species, the claim that has been made, that the forests of eastern America contain the noblest deciduous trees of all temperate regions, can, so far as Japan is con- cerned, be substantiated, for, with few exceptions, the deciduous trees of eastern America surpass their Asiatic relatives in size and beauty. In the Magnolia family Japan possesses five genera, while in the United States there are only four. In Japan arborescent Magnoliacee reach the most northern limit attained in any country by these plants, and one of the most interesting features of the Japanese flora is the presence in Yezo of two large trees of this tropical and semitropical family as far north, at least, as the forty-fourth degree, while the representative of a third genus, Schizandra, is found still farther north on the Manchurian mainland. In eastern America two species of Magnolia reach nearly as high latitudes as this genus does in Japan, but in the United States Magnolia is really southern, and has only succeeded in obtaining a precarious foothold at the north, while in Yezo it is a most important element and a conspicuous feature of the forest vegetation. Of true Magnolias three species grow naturally in Japan; two of these belong to the section of the genus which produces its flowers before the leaves appear, and which has no representative in the’flora of America; the third, Magnolia hypoleuca, bears some resemblance to our Magnolia tripetala. This tree is seen at its best in the damp rich forests which cover the low rolling hills of Yezo, where it sometimes rises to the height of a hundred feet and forms trunks two feet in diameter; on the other Japanese islands it is confined to the moun- tain forests, and apparently does not descend below 2,000 feet above the sea; and it is only in Yezo and on the high mountains in the extreme northern part of the main island that I saw it of large size. In central Japan it rarely appears more than twenty or thirty feet high, although this can perhaps be accounted for by the fact that all trees in the accessible parts of the Japanese forests are cut as soon as they are large enough to be used for timber. Magnolia hypoleuca must be considered a northern species, requiring a cold winter climate for its best development, and it probably will not thrive in regions where the ground is not covered with snow during several months of every year. Magnolia hypoleuca is one of the largest and most beautiful of the deciduous-leaved Magnolias; in the early autumn, when the cones of fruit, which exceed those of any of our species in size and are sometimes eight inches long, and brilliant scarlet in color, stand out on Prats III. C. E. Faxon del. MAGNOLIA KOBUS, D. Cc. s THE MAGNOLIA FAMILY. 9 the branches, it is the most striking feature of the forests of Hokkaido, which in variety and interest are not surpassed by those of any other part of the world. Like Magnolia tripetala, it isa tree of open habit, with long spreading irregularly contorted branches covered, as well as the trunk, with pale smooth bark. The leaves, however, are not as much crowded together at the ends of the flowering branches as they are in the American species, but are placed rather remotely on the branchlets ; they are twelve or fourteen inches long and seven or eight inches broad, and on young vigorous trees are sometimes twice this size. On the upper surface they are light bright green, and pale steel blue or sometimes almost silvery on the lower surface, so that when raised by the wind they give the tree a light and cheerful appear- ance. The flowers are six or seven inches across when expanded, with creamy white petals and brilliant scarlet filaments; they appear in May and June, after the leaves are nearly full grown, and are very fragrant. Magnolia hypoleuca is still rare in gardens, although it was sent by Mr. Thomas Hogg to the United States as early as 1865, and has flowered in the neighborhood of New York and Boston ; it is probable that it will thrive in any part of the northern United States, although, like other Hokkaido trees, it may suffer from summer and autumn droughts, which are unknown in Japan, where the rainfall during August and September is regular and abundant. As an ornamental tree Magnolia hypoleuca is superior to Magnolia tripetala in the fragrance of its flowers and in the coloring of its leaves ; it is less desirable than Magnolia macrophylla, which surpasses its Japanese relative in form and in the size and beauty of its flowers and leaves, the largest produced on any plant of the Magnolia family, and larger than those of any other North American tree. As a timber-tree Magnolia hypoleuca is valuable. The wood, like that of all the Magnolias, is straight-grained, soft, light-colored, and easily seasoned and worked. It is esteemed and much used in Japan for all sorts of objects that are to be covered with lacquer, especially sword-sheaths, which are usually made from it; in Hokkaido it is employed for the interior finish of houses, and for boxes and cabinets, although harder woods are generally preferred for such purposes. In the forests of Hokkaido a second species, Magnolia Kobus,’ occurs. This tree some- times grows in the neighborhood of Sapporo to the height of seventy or eighty feet, and develops a tall straight trunk nearly two feet in diameter, covered with rather dark, slightly furrowed bark. The branches are short and slender, and form a narrow pyramidal head, which only becomes round-topped when the tree has attained its full size. The branchlets are more slender than those of most species of Magnolia, and are covered with dark reddish brown bark. The flowers (Plate iii.) appear near Sapporo in the middle of May, before the leaves, from acute buds an inch long, half an inch broad, and protected by long thickly matted pale hairs. They are from four to five inches across when fully expanded, with small acute caducous sepals and narrow obovate thin creamy white petals. The stamens, with short broad filaments, are much shorter than the narrow acute cone of pistils. The leaves are obovate, 1 Magnolia Kobus, De Candolle, Syst. i. 456. — Miquel, Magnolia tomentosa, Thunberg, Trans. Linn. Soc. ii. 336 Prol. Fl. Jap. 146. — Maximowicz, Méi. Biol. viii. 507.— (in part). Franchet & Savatier, Enum. Pl. Jap. i. 16. Magnolia glauca, var. a, Thunberg, Fl. Jap. 236. Kobus, Kaempfer, Icon. Select. t. 42. 10 : FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. gradually narrowed below, and abruptly contracted at the apex into short broad points ; they are pubescent on the lower surface at first, especially on the stout midribs and primary veins, but at maturity are glabrous, or nearly so, and are bluish green, and rather lighter colored on the lower than on the upper surface; they are six or seven inches long, three or four inches broad, rather conspicuously reticulate-veined, and are borne on stout petioles half .an inch to an inch and a half in length. The fruit is slender, four or five inches long, and is often contorted or curved from the abortion of some of the seeds; it is dark brown, the carpels being conspicuously marked with pale dots. Magnolia Kobus is exceedingly common in the forests which clothe the hills in the neigh- borhood of Sapporo, where it grows to a larger size than in any part of Japan which I visited ; / near the shores of Voleano Bay it occurs in low swampy ground and in the neighborhood of streams, in situations very similar to those selected by Magnolia glauca in the United States. On the main island Magnolia Kobus is much less common than it is in Hokkaido, and I only met with it occasionally on the Hakone and Nikké Mountains at considerable elevations above the sea. This handsome tree was introduced into the United States by Mr. Thomas Hogg, and was distributed from the Parsons’ Nurseries as Magnolia Thurberi, under the belief that it was an undescribed species. In cultivation it does not flower freely in the young state, although trees in Pennsylvania, and in the Arnold Arboretum, where it was raised from seed sent from Sapporo fifteen years ago, have produced a few flowers. In New England Magnolia Kobus is the hardiest, most vigorous, and most rapid growing of all Magnolias. I spent the 2d and 3d of October in company with Mr. James Herbert Veitch and Mr. Tokubuchi, an accomplished Japanese botanist, on Mount Hakkoda, an extinct volcano 6,000 feet high, which rises southeast and a few miles distant from Aomori, the most northern city of the main island of Japan. Botanically this was one of the most interesting excursions I made in Japan, and we were able to gather the seeds of a number of plants that we did not meet with elsewhere. On this mountain, in the very spot, perhaps, where Maries discovered this fine tree, we found Abies Mariesii covered with its large purple cones; and on the upper slopes saw the dwarf Pinus pumila, forming almost impenetrable thickets five or six feet high and many acres in area, and numerous alpine shrubs like Andromeda nana, Gaultheria pyro- loides, Epigza Asiatica, Phyllodoce taxifolia, and Geum dryadoides. On this mountain, too, we established the most northern recorded station in Asia of the Hemlock (Tsuga diversi- folia) ; and near the base Ilex crenata, Ilex Sugeroki, a handsome evergreen species with bright red fruit, the dwarf Ilex integra, var. leucoclada, and Daphniphyllum humile were very common ; and here we were fortunate in finding good fruit and ripe seeds of Magnolia salicifolia. On Mount Hakkoda Magnolia salicifolia (see Plate iv.) is a common plant between 2,000 and 3,000 feet above the sea-level. As it appears there it is a slender tree fifteen or twenty feet high, with stems three or four inches thick, covered with pale smooth bark, and some- times solitary, or more commonly in clusters of three or four. The branchlets are slender, and light green at first, like those of Magnolia glauca, later growing darker, and in their third year becoming dark reddish brown. The leaves are ovate, acute, gradually narrowed or rarely rounded at the base, contracted into long slender points and sometimes slightly falcate Puiate IV. MAGNOLIA SALICIFOLIA, Max. « THE MAGNOLIA FAMILY." 11 toward the apex; they are thin, light green on the upper and silvery white on the lower surface, quite glabrous at maturity, five or six inches long, an inch and a half to two inches broad, and are borne on slender petioles half an inch in length. When bruised they are more fragrant than those of any species of Magnolia with which I am acquainted, exhaling the ‘delicate odor of anise-seed. The winter flower-bud is two thirds of an inch long, rather obtuse, and protected by a thick coat of yellow-white hairs. The flowers of this tree are not known to botanists, but from the shape and character of the winter-buds they are probably of good size and produced in early spring before the appearance of the leaves. The fruit is slender, flesh-color, an inch and a half to two inches long, and half an inch broad. Magnolia salicifolia’ grows on Mount Hakkoda in low wet situations, generally near streams, and is evidently a moisture-loving plant. In November I found a single small plant of this species near the town of Fukushima, on the hills which rise above the valley of the Kisogawa, not far from the base of Mount Ontake, in central Japan. Magnolia salicifolia is new to cultivation, and we were fortunate in obtaining a good supply of seeds, by means of which, it is to be hoped, this interesting tree will soon appear in gardens. Among the Magnolias of Japan there is no evergreen species which resembles the great evergreen Magnolia of our southern states, or at all equals it in the beauty of flowers and foliage ; and the nearest approach to an evergreen Magnolia in the empire of the Mikado is the representative of a closely allied genus, Michelia, differing from Magnolia in the position of the flowers, which, instead of being terminal on the branches, are, except in the case of one Indian species, axillary ; and in the number of ovules and seeds, of which there are two in each carpel of Magnolia and more than two in each carpel of Michelia. A dozen species are known, inhabitants of southern and southwestern Asia, including the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and, with the exception of the Chinese Michelia fuscata (or as it is habitually called in our southern states, Magnolia), which is cultivated for its exceedingly fragrant small flowers in all warm temperate countries, the genus is not seen in American or European gardens. The Japanese species, Michelia compressa” (see Plate v.), as it appears in the Botanic Garden of the University of Tokyé, is a tree thirty to forty feet in height, with a trunk twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, covered with smooth dark bark, and rather slender branches which form a compact handsome round-topped head. The winter-buds and the branchlets during their first year are clothed with soft ferruginous or pale hairs; in their second season the branchlets are slender, light or dark brown, marked, especially near their extremities, with large pale lenticels, and conspicuous from the raised nearly circular leaf-scars. The leaves are oblong or narrowly obovate, gradually contracted into long slender petioles, and are rounded or short-pointed at the apex, entire, coriaceous, conspicuously reticulate- veined, and dark green and lustrous on the upper, and pale and dull on the lower surface; they are three or four inches long, an inch to an inch and a half broad, with petioles an 1 Magnolia salicifolia, Maximowicz, Mel. Biol. viii. 509.— 2 Magnolia (Michelia) compressa, Maximowicz, Mél. Franchet & Savatier, Enum. Pl. Jap. i. 16. Biol. viii. 506. — Franchet & Savatier, Enum. Pl. Jap. i. 15. Biirgeria (?) salicifolia, Siebold & Zuccarini, Fv. Jap. Fam. Nat. i. 187. — Miquel, Prol. Fl. Jap. 144. 12 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. inch in length, and fall, when a year old, after the appearance of the newshoots. The flowers, which are very fragrant, are from an inch to an inch and a quarter across when expanded, with pale yellow narrow obovate sepals and petals, nearly sessile anthers, and a stipitate head of pistils, the ovaries, according to Maximowicz, each containing five or six ovules. The cone of fruit is two inches long, and is raised on a stalk half an inch or more in length ; the rusty brown thick-walled carpels, which are marked with large pale circular dots, usually containing three seeds; these are broadly ovate and much flattened by mutual pressure. Michelia compressa, which is the most boreal species of its genus, was discovered near Nagasaki by Maximowicz, who saw a single tree. Oldham, an English botanist, collected it near the base of Fuji-san, doubtless from a cultivated tree, and it is said to be found in several places in the extreme southern part of the empire, although I have never seen it except in the Botanic Garden of Tokyd, where there are several large trees, from which were collected the specimens figured in our illustration. It is not improbable that Michelia is at the northern limit of its range in Japan and that it will be found to be more at home on the Loochoo Islands or on Formosa when the interesting flora of these islands is carefully explored. The fact that Michelia compressa flourishes in Tokyé, where our southern ever- green Magnolia hardly survives, indicates that it may perhaps be grown as far north as Washington and, possibly, Philadelphia, in southern England and Ireland, and on the west coast of France, that is, in regions where no other species of this genus can exist in the open ground, and where broad-leaved evergreen trees are rare and much desired. The Japanese Illicium is a beautiful and interesting plant. It is the representative of a genus with two species in our southern states and half a dozen others in India and southern China, one of which, Illicium verum, supplies the star anise of the pharmacists. Tlicium anisatum, or as it should, perhaps, be called, Ilicium religiosum, is a beautiful small evergreen tree, fifteen or twenty feet high, with brilliant persistent leaves and small fragrant yellow flowers. It is one of the sacred plants of Japan. Siebold considered it a native of China or Corea and an introduction by Buddhist priests into Japan. This may be the correct view, although Japanese botanists now believe it to be a native of the southern part of the empire, where Rein found it, as he supposed, growing wild. Sacred to Buddha, it is always planted in the neighborhood of his temples, and is common in private gardens as far north as the thirty-fifth degree of latitude. The branches of this tree, especially when it is in flower, are used to decorate the altars in the temples, or in cemeteries serve to mark the respect of the living for the dead. From the powdered bark, mixed with resin, are prepared the “smoke candles”’ with which incense is made in the temples, and with which the “moxa” is burned on the human body as a sovereign cure for many of its ills. The remaining Japanese plants of the Magnolia family, Kadsura and Schizandra, are woody climbers. Kadsura Japonica is the type of a genus consisting of seven or eight species, all natives of southern and western Asia, and its most northern member growing spontane- ously in the southern islands and at the sea-level in Hondo as far north as the thirty-fifth degree of latitude. The flowers are not showy, but it is a plant of extraordinary beauty in the autumn, when the clusters of scarlet fruit are ripe, their brillianey being heightened by contrast with the dark green lustrous persistent leaves. There is a fine specimen of this plant . Puate V. MICHELIA COMPRESSA, Maxm. 0. E. Faxon del. ° THE MAGNOLIA FAMILY. 13 in the garden attached to the Agricultural College at Tokyo; but I have never seen it in any other, although it might well be grown wherever the climate is sufficiently mild to enable it to produce fruit. Schizandra is familiar to American botanists as one species, the type of the genus, Schi- zandra coccinea, inhabits our southern states; in Japan two species occur, and one of these, Schizandra Chinensis, which grows also in Manchuria, carries the Magnolia family farther north than any of its other members. It is a vigorous plant, with long twining stems, and small unisexual white flowers, followed by clusters of brilliant red berry-like fruits, which in September and October enliven the forests of Hokkaido, where this plant is extremely common. Schizandra Chinensis is now well established in our gardens, flowering freely every year, although in the neighborhood of Boston it has not ripened its fruit. The second species, Schizandra nigra, is much less common in Japan than Schizandra Chinensis, from which it may be distinguished by its broader leaves, larger flowers, and by its blue-black fruit and pitted seeds. It grows in southern Yezo, where, however, I failed to find it. Mr. Veitch collected it in September at Fukura, on the west coast of Hondo, and at the end of October I found a single plant near Fukushima, on the Nakasend6, in central Japan, from which I had the good fortune to gather a few ripe seeds; this interesting plant has not yet been brought under cultivation. The forests of Japan are distinguished by the presence of a small family related to the Magnolias, and composed of three genera, Cercidiphyllum and Trochodendron, which are monotypic and endemic to Japan, and Euptelea, which has also a representative in the Hima- -laya forests. The plants of this genus are principally distinguished from the Magnolias by their generally dicecious minute flowers, which are either entirely destitute of a perianth or are furnished with a membranaceous four-lobed calyx. For this family the name of T’rochoden- dracee has been proposed.’ Cercidiphyllum Japonicum is the most important tree of this family, and the largest and one of the most interesting deciduous trees of Japan, which more than any other of its inhab- itants gives to the forests of Yezo their peculiar appearance and character (see Plate vi.). Here it inhabits the slopes of low hills and selects a moist situation in deep rich soil, from which the denseness of the forest and the impenetrable growth of dwarf Bamboos, which covers the forest-floor, effectually check evaporation. In such situations the Cercidiphyllum attains its greatest size, often rising to the height of a hundred feet, and developing clusters of stems eight or ten feet through. Sometimes it forms a single trunk three or four feet in diameter and free of branches for fifty feet above the ground; but more commonly it sends up a number of stems which are united together for several feet into a stout trunk, and then gradually diverge. The trunk of a typical Cercidiphyllum of this form appears in the frontispiece of this work ; it is the reproduction of a photograph made on a hill near Sapporo, and represents a large but by no means an exceptionally large trunk, which at three feet above the ground girted twenty-one feet and six inches. In Cercidiphyllum the leaves on sterile shoots are either alternate or opposite; in their axils small acute red buds, covered with four to six thin scarious slightly imbricated scales, 1 Engler & Prantl, Pflanzenfam. iii. pt. ii. 21. 14 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. are formed early in the autumn. The branchlet ends during the winter in a small orbicular scar between two buds when the leaves are opposite, and at the side of a single bud when the leaves are alternate. arly in the following spring the buds develop short spur-like almost obsolete branches, which produce a single leaf and terminal flowers. Later a bud is formed in the axil of the leaf which, on fruit-bearing trees, appears between the leaf and the stalk of the fruit-cluster. The branches, therefore, in their second and third years, appear to be clothed with opposite or alternate leaves, although the leaves are in reality produced on lateral branches. The leaves are involute and coated on the lower surface in the bud with pale caducous pubescence, and are furnished with lanceolate acute caducous stipules slightly connate toward the base. The staminate and pistillate flowers are produced on separate individuals; the staminate are subsessile, solitary or fascicled, the pistillate solitary and pedunculate. The staminate flower is composed of a minute scarious calyx, divided to the base into four acute apiculate divisions, and of an indefinite number of stamens; the filaments are slender, elongated, and inserted on a conical receptacle ; the anthers are oblong- lanceolate, attached at the base, apiculate by the prolongation of the narrow connective, and two-celled, the cells opening longitudinally throughout their length. The pistillate flower is composed of a membranaceous calyx divided into four unequal sepals laciniately cut on the margins, and of four or sometimes of five or six carpels inserted by their oblique bases on a prominent pyramidal receptacle; they are gibbous and acute on the ventral suture, and straight and rounded on the dorsal suture, and are gradually narrowed into elongated slender styles stigmatic on their inner face below the middle; the ovules are inserted in two rows on the placenta, and are descending and anatropous. The fruit is a cluster of two to six more or less spreading oblong stipitate follicles tipped with the persistent styles, and splitting through the ventral suture, which by a twist usually becomes external. The pericarp is thick, light brown, and lustrous, and separates into two layers; the outer layer is thin and mem- branaceous, and the inner layer is hard and woody, and lustrous on the inner surface. The seeds, which are closely imbricated in two rows, are pendulous, compressed, nearly square, attached obliquely, and covered with a thin, light brown membranaceous coat, which is produced into an elongated terminal wing three times as long as the body of the seed and slightly narrowed at the apex. The embryo is axile in copious fleshy albumen, with plane cotyledons about as long as the slender superior radicle turned toward the hilum. The trunk of Cercidiphyllum Japonicum is covered with thick pale bark, deeply furrowed, and broken into narrow ridges. Similar bark covers the principal branches; these are very stout, and issuing from the stem nearly at right angles, gradually droop, the slender red- dish branchlets in which they end being often decidedly pendulous. The upper branches and branchlets are erect, the whole skeleton of the tree showing, even in summer, through the sparse small nearly circular leaves, which are placed remotely on the branches; in the autumn the leaves turn clear bright yellow. In port and in the general appearance of its foliage, Cercidiphyllum, as it appears in the forests of Yezo, might, at first sight, be mistaken for a venerable Ginkgo-tree, which in old age has the same habit, with pendulous branches below and erect branches above; but the trunk and its covering are very different in the two trees. Cercidiphyllum Japonicum is distributed from central Yezo southward through nearly the ‘0007 IA aaIg ‘WMNOINOdVE WATIAHdICIOUI ‘ THE MAGNOLIA FAMILY. 15 entire length of the Japanese islands. At the north it grows at the sea-level, and is very common, but on the main island it is confined to high elevations, and is rare. Except in Yezo, it seldom grows more than twenty or thirty feet high, and I never saw it, in Hondo, below 5,000 feet elevation, where, as at Yumoto, in the Nikko Mountains, it is scattered through the lower borders of the Hemlock forest. Cercidiphyllum Japonicum is a valuable timber-tree, producing soft straight-grained light yellow wood, which resembles the wood of Liriodendron, although rather lighter and softer, and probably inferior in quality. It is easily worked, and in Yezo is a favorite material for the interior finish of cheap houses and for cases, packing-boxes, ete. From its great trunks the Ainos hollowed their canoes, and it is from this wood that they make the mortars found in every Aino house and used in pounding grain. In New England, where there are now trees twenty feet high, Cercidiphyllum is very hardy, and grows rapidly ; in its young state it is nearly as fastigiate in habit as a Lombardy Poplar, the trunk being covered from the ground with slender upright branches that shade it from the sun, which seems injurious to this tree, at least while young. As an ornamental plant, Cercidiphyllum is only valuable for its peculiar Cercis-like leaves, which, when they unfold in early spring, are bright red, and for its peculiar habit, as the flowers and fruit are neither conspicuous nor beautiful (see Plate Of the other J apanese trees of this family, Euptelea polyandra is the least desirable as an ornamental plant, and it will probably never be very much cultivated except as a botanical curiosity. It is a small tree twenty to thirty feet in height, with a slender straight trunk covered with smooth pale bark, stout rigid chestnut-brown branchlets, marked with white spots, and wide-spreading branches, which form an open, rather unsightly head. The leaves are thin, prominently veined, bright green, sometimes five or six inches long and broad, nearly circular in outline, and deeply and very irregularly cut on the margins, with long, broad, apical points; they are borne on long slender petioles, and turn to a dull yellow-brown color before falling. The minute flowers appear in early spring before the leaves, and are produced in three or four-flowered clusters from buds formed early in the previous autumn. They have neither sepals nor petals, and consist of a number of slender stamens surrounding the free clustered carpels. The fruit, which ripens in November, is not more showy than the flowers ; it is a small stalked samara half an inch long, and furnished with an oblique marginal membranaceous wing. The handsomest thing about this tree is the winter-bud, which is obtuse, half an inch long, and covered with imbricated scales, which are bright chestnut- brown, and as lustrous as if they had been covered with a coat of varnish. Euptelea poly- andra is found in the mountainous forests of central Japan, usually on the banks or in the neighborhood of streams between 2,000 and 3,000 feet above the sea-level, but does not appear to be anywhere very common. The third genus of this family, Trochodendron, like Euptelea, produces flowers without sepals and petals. The only species, Trochodendron aralioides, is a small handsome glabrous evergreen tree, with alternate broadly rhomboidal crenulate penniveined leaves, four or five inches long ; they are borne on elongated stout petioles, and are clustered at the extremities of the branches. ‘The flowers are produced in short terminal racemes, and consist of numerous 16 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. anthers raised on slender filaments and surrounding the carpels, which are connate in a vertical series, and ripen into a small fleshy drupe crowned with the remnants of the persistent styles. Trochodendron is a tree from fifteen to twenty-five feet in height, and is said to be very common in some parts of the country, although I never saw it growing wild; and it is certainly not an inhabitant of the alpine forests or of Hokkaido, as stated in some works on the Japanese flora, although, perhaps, it occurs in northern Hondo at the sea-level, as it is hardy in the gardens of Nikké at an elevation of 2,000 feet above the ocean. Trochodendron aralioides is often cultivated by the Japanese, and fine specimens of this tree are found scat- tered through public and private gardens in Téky6 and Yokohama. Prater VII. C. E. Faxon del. CERCIDIPHYLLUM JAPONICUM, Stes er. Zuce. THE TERNSTRG:MIA, LINDEN, AND RUE FAMILIES. Tue chiefly tropical family, Ternstrcemiacee, which, in North America, is represented only by Gordonia and Stuartia, trees and shrubs of the southern states, in Japan appears in eight genera, in which are a number of interesting plants, although none of them become very large trees. Of these, Camellia Japonica is horticulturally the most important, for its relative, Camellia theifera, the Tea-plant, is evidently a Chinese or Assam introduction, and not a native of Japan. In southern Japan the Camellia is a common forest-plant from the sea-level to an altitude of 2,500 feet, on the east coast growing as far north as latitude thirty-six, and nearly two degrees farther on the west coast. Here it is a dwarf bush only two or three feet high, although where the soil and climate favor it, the Camellia becomes a tree thirty or forty feet tall, with a handsome straight trunk a foot in diameter, covered with smooth pale bark hardly distinguishable from that of the Beech. In its wild state the flower of the Camellia is red, and does not fully expand, the corolla retaining the shape of a cup until it falls. In Japan, certainly less attention has been paid to the improvement of the Camellia than in Europe and America, although double-flowered varieties are known; and as an ornamental plant it does not appear to be particularly popular with the Japanese ; it is sometimes planted, however, in temple and city gardens, especially in Tékyd, where it is not an uncommon plant, and where beautiful old specimens are to be seen. Tsubaki, by which name Camellia Japonica is known in Japan, is more valued for the oil which is pressed from its seeds than for the beauty of its flowers. This oil, which the other species of Camellia also produce, is used by the women in dressing their hair, and is an article of much commercial importance. The wood of Camellia is close-grained, moderately hard, and light-colored, turning pink with exposure; it is cut into combs, although less valued for this purpose than boxwood, and is manufactured into numerous small articles of domestic use. Sasan-kuwa, Camellia Sasanqua, a small bushy tree of southern Japan and China, is perhaps more commonly encountered in Japanese gardens than the Tsubaki, and in the first week of November it was just beginning to open its delicate pink flowers in the gardens of Nikko, although the night temperature was nearly down to the freezing point. Ternstreemia Japonica and Cleyera ochnacea are small bushy trees scattered from India to southern Japan, where they are considered sacred by votaries of the Shinto religion, and are therefore planted in the grounds of Shintd temples and in most private gardens. The ever- green foliage of these two plants is handsome, especially that of Ternstreemia, but the flowers and fruit possess little beauty, and they owe their chief interest to their association with Japanese civilization. Eurya Japonica is another member of the family, of wide range from Ceylon and India to China, the Fejee Islands, and Japan, where it is exceedingly common ‘in the southern islands and in Hondo as far north, at least, as the Hakone Mountains. It is usually a shrub only a 18 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. few feet high ; but I saw a specimen in the woods surrounding a temple near Nakatsu-gawa, on the Nakasendé, which was fully thirty feet in height, with a well-formed trunk nearly a foot in diameter. Eurya, although not particularly handsome, is interesting from the color of the leaves, which are yellowish green on the upper surface and decidedly yellow below. Stuartia is represented in eastern America by two handsome shrubs, one an inhabitant of the coast region of the south Atlantic states, and the other of the southern Alleghany Moun- tains; in Japan there are two and, perhaps, three species. Of these, Stuartia monadelpha, which inhabits also central China, appears to be a southern plant only; at any rate, I saw nothing of it in Japan, nor of the little known Stuartia serrata of Maximowicz. The third species, Stuartia Pseudo-Camellia, is common on the Hakone and Nikké Mountains between 2,000 and 3,000 feet elevation, where it is a most striking object from the peculiar appearance of the bark ; this is light red, very smooth, and peels off in small flakes like that of the Crape Myrtle (Lagerstrcemia) ; to this peculiarity it owes its common name, Saru-suberi, or Monkey- slider. Stuartia Pseudo-Camellia is often a tree of considerable size; on the shores of Lake Chuzenji we measured a specimen whose trunk at three feet from the ground girted six feet, and which was upward of fifty feet high; and specimens nearly as large are common on the road between Nikké and Chuzenji. The flowers of this tree, which resemble a single white Camellia, are smaller and less beautiful than the flowers of our coast species, Stuartia Vir- ginica, but they are larger than those of the second American species, Stuartia pentagyna, a handsome plant, which is not made enough of in our northern gardens, where it is perfectly hardy and one of the best of the summer-flowering shrubs. Stuartia Pseudo-Camellia was sent to America nearly thirty years ago by the late Mr. Thomas Hogg, and it appears to have flowered in the neighborhood of New York several years before it was knqwn in Europe, where of late it has attracted considerable attention.'. In New England this Japanese species appears perfectly hardy, and two years ago it flowered in the Arnold Arboretum. Stachyurus precox, another Japanese member of this family, is still little known in our gardens, although it was one of the plants sent by Mr. Hogg to New York soon after the opening of Japan to foreign commerce. It appears hardy in the neighborhood of New York, as there is at least one plant established in Prospect Park, on Long Island. In Japan Stachyu- rus is exceedingly common in the mountain forests and at the sea-level from southern Yezo to Kyishi, appearing as a tall graceful shrub, with thin semiscandent branches and ovate- lanceolate acute leaves. In summer or early autumn it forms axillary spikes of flower-buds two or three inches long, and in very early spring, before the appearance of the leaves, these buds expand into bell-shaped pale yellow flowers ; these are not more than a third of an inch long, but they are produced in great profusion, and as they appear so early in the season Stachyurus will probably prove a popular plant if it is found to flourish in cultivation. The genus is represented in central China and in the Himalaya Mountains with a second species described as a small tree. The genus Actinidia, woody climbers of the Himalayas and eastern Asia, appears in Japan in three species, of which two, at least, are exceedingly common and conspicuous features of the mountain vegetation. Of these, the largest and most common, especially at the north, 1 See Rev. Hort. 1879, 430, t. — Gard. Chron. ser. 4, iv. 188, £. 22. — Bot. Mag. exv. t. 7045. _ THE TERNSTRG@MIA, LINDEN, AND RUE FAMILIES. As is Actinidia arguta; little need be said of this handsome plant, as it is now common and well established in our gardens, where it grows with great vigor and rapidity, and where it is one of the best plants of its class. We have heard a good deal of the value of the fruit of this plant, which is depressed-globular, an inch across, and greenish yellow ; it is eaten in Japan, but the flavor is insipid, and its merits appear to have been exaggerated. It was offered for sale in the streets of Hakodate in great quantities, but, of course, green and hard, as the Japanese use all their fruit before it ripens. Actinidia polygama, although it inhabits Manchuria and Saghalin, and is common in the forests of Hokkaido, is more abundant in those which cover the mountains of central Japan ; it is a slenderer plant than Actinidia arguta, with elliptical acute slightly serrate long-stalked leaves. The fruit is an inch and a half long, half an inch broad in the middle, and narrowed at both ends; it is canary-yellow, rather translucent, soft and juicy, with an extremely disagreeable flavor. Actinidia polygama does not, like Actinidia arguta, climb into the tops of tall trees; its weaker stems tumble about and form great tangles, sometimes twenty feet or more across, and fifteen or twenty feet high. The most remarkable thing about this plant is that in summer the leaves toward the ends of the branches become pale yellow, either over their entire surface or only above the middle, not because they are drying up or ripening, but apparently from an insufficient supply of chlorophyll. The effect that the plants produce at this time is curious and interesting, and when seen from a distance growing on a mountain- side or on the banks of a stream, they appear like huge bushes covered with pale yellow flowers. This fine plant is still little known in cultivation, but if it flourishes in New England like Actinidia arguta it will form a most valuable addition to our shrubberies. Actinidia Kolomikta, which is found also in Manchuria and northern China, is much less common in Japan than the other species. I saw it only on the rocky cliffs of a hill near Sapporo, where it was growing with Rhododendrons and Menziesia, and where it was a deli- cate, slender vine, with stems only a few feet in length. Unfortunately, there were no seeds to be obtained, and I am doubtful if this species has ever been introduced into our gardens, although the name often appears in nurserymen’s catalogues. In the forests of Japan are found two Lindens. They are both extremely common in Yezo, but in the other islands are rare, and confined to mountain-slopes of considerable elevation. The larger of the two, Tilia Miqueliana (see Plate vui.), is a handsome tree, often growing in central Yezo to the height of one hundred feet, and forming a trunk four or five feet in diameter. As it is only seen crowded among other trees in the forest, the branches are short, and the head is oblong and rather narrow. The bark, like that of all the Lindens, is broken by longitudinal furrows, and is ight brown or dark gray. The young branchlets are unusually stout for a Linden-tree, and in their first season are covered, as are the large ovate- obtuse winter-buds, with hoary tomentum. The leaves are deltoid or deltoid-obovate, abruptly contracted at the apex into broad points, obliquely truncate or subcordate at the base, and coarsely and sharply serrate with incurved callous teeth; they are four to six inches long, three or four inches broad, rather light green, and more or less puberulous on the upper surface, and pale and tomentose on the lower, especially on the prominent midribs and primary veins, in their axils, and on the stout petioles, which are two or three inches in length. The 20 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. peduncle-bract is rounded at the apex, sessile or short-stalked, three or four inches long, from one third to two thirds of an inch broad, and, like the slender stems and branches of the flower-cluster and its bractlets, covered with pale tomentum. The flowers appear in Sapporo toward the middle of July. Like those of the American Lindens and of two species of eastern Europe, Tilia petiolaris and Tilia argentea, which Tilia Miqueliana resembles in several partic- ulars, the flowers are furnished with petal-like scales, to which the stamens, united in clusters, are attached. The sepals are ovate-acute, tomentose on the two surfaces, especially on the inner, and shorter than the narrow obovate petals. The style, like the stamens, is longer than the petals, and is coated at the base with thick pale hairs, which also cover the ovary. The fruit, which ripens in October, is ovate to oblong, wingless, and nearly half an inch long. It is from the inner bark of this species that the Ainos make their ropes. Tilia Miqueliana! is comparatively little known, having at one time been confounded with Tilia Mandshurica, which does not reach Japan. This noble tree will probably thrive in the northern states, as plants which have been growing for a few years in the Arnold Arboretum appear perfectly hardy. In Europe it is cultivated as Tilia Mandshurica (Kew), and as Tilia heterophylla (Paris), although it does not appear to be much better known there than it is in the United States. The second Japanese Linden is a small tree, rarely growing more than fifty or sixty feet tall in Hokkaido, where, perhaps, it is rather less abundant than Tilia Miqueliana. In books it appears as Tilia cordata, var. Japonica ; but Tilia cordata is a synonym for Tilia ulmifolia, a common European and north Asian species, so that unless the Japanese plant is found specifically distinct, which is not probable, it should be known as Tilia ulmifolia, var. Japonica. It is a round-headed tree with dark brown bark, slender red-brown branches, glabrous, like the buds, even when young, and marked with oblong pale lenticels. The leaves are broadly ovate or nearly orbicular, contracted at the apex into short or long broad points, and usually cordate, or occasionally oblique, at the base, and sharply serrate with incurved callous teeth; they are membranaceous, light green and lustrous on the upper surface, light green, pale, or nearly white on the lower surface, which is marked by conspicuous tufts of rufous hairs in the axils of the principal veins, three or four inches long, and two or three inches broad. The peduncle-bract is from three to three and a half inches long, and half an inch broad, with a slender stalk sometimes an inch in length. The stem and branches of the flower-cluster are slender and glabrous. The sepals, which are acute, slightly puberulous on the outer surface, ciliate on the margins, and furnished on the inner surface at the base with large tufts of pale hairs, are shorter than the narrow acute petals; the ovary is clothed with white tomentum. The fruit is oblong, or slightly obovate, and covered with rusty tomentum. The petaloid- scales, which Maximowicz” found developed in some of the flowers of this tree, I have not seen. This is the only Linden cultivated by the Japanese, who occasionally plant it in temple gardens, especially in the interior and mountainous part of the empire. It was introduced in 1 Tilia Miqueliana, Maximowicz, Mél. Biol. x. 585. Tilia Mandshuriea, Miquel, Prol. Fl. Jap. 206 (in part). — Franchet & Savatier, Enum. Pl. Jap. i. 67 (in part). 2 Mél. Biol. x. 585. Puate VIII. C. E. Faxon del. TILIA MIQUELIANA, Max. .THE TERNSTR@MIA, LINDEN, AND RUE FAMILIES. 21 1886 into the Arnold Arboretum, and has so far proved hardy. It is, however, scarcely distinct enough from the European plant to make its cultivation as an ornamental tree particu- larly desirable. Eleocarpus, a genus of the Linden family distributed with many species through tropical Asia, Australia, and the Pacific islands, is represented in Japan by two fine trees, found only in the extreme southern part of the empire. Of these I saw only Eleocarpus photiniefolia, a noble tree, planted in the gardens of a temple in the seashore town of Atami, where there are the largest Camphor-trees in Japan and good specimens of a number of other southern trees. The Rue family has a number of woody plants in Japan. Of these, Skimmia Japonica is the only one which is much known in our gardens, although Phellodendron Amurense and Orixa Japonica are now found in most large botanical collections. Evodia rutecarpa, a shrub or very small tree, with large, pinnate, strong-smelling leaves and terminal heads of minute flowers, although not at all handsome, is an interesting plant, as it is from the bark that the Japanese obtain the yellow pigment which they use in dyeing. For this purpose the bark, ‘which, with the exception of its thin brown outer coat marked with pale lenticels, is the color of gamboge, is torn off in long strips, air-dried, and sent to the large cities. Evodia rute- carpa, which also inhabits central China and the Himalayas, is now becoming rare in Japan, and I saw it only on the coast near Atami; it is said to be still abundant, however, in Aidzu and on the peninsula of Yamato. The scarlet aromatic fruit is used by the Japanese in medicine. In Xanthoxylum there are four Japanese species. Of these, the most common, and the most widely distributed at the north and in the mountainous regions of the main island at elevations of from 2,000 to 4,000 feet above the sea, is Xanthoxylum piperitum. It is a bushy shrub with many slender stems, or rarely a small tree with a well-developed trunk three or four inches in diameter ; it is always a handsome plant, with dark or often nearly black branchlets marked by pale spots and armed with stout straight spines; with narrow unequally pinnate leaves of about six pairs of ovate pointed leaflets, very dark green on the upper surface and pale on the lower; with small inconspicuous flowers and with heads of handsome showy fruit four to six inches across; the pods are rusty brown ; and the seeds, which do not drop for some time after the pods open, are black and lustrous. The fruits of this plant are gathered in large quantities by the Japanese before the pods open, and are used as a condiment and in cooking, as we use pepper. In Hakodate and other northern towns it is commonly exposed for sale throughout the year. A nobler plant than Xanthoxylum piperitum, and certainly one of the most beautiful of the genus, is Xanthoxylum ailanthoides, which I saw only onthe Hakone Mountains, where it is abundant, and near the coast at Atami. It is a round-topped broad-branched tree, some- times fifty or sixty feet tall, with a trunk twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, covered with pale bark, upon which the corky excrescences common in many species of this genus are well developed. The branchlets are stout and pale, and are covered with short stout spines. The leaves vary from eighteen inches to four feet in length, and are unequally pinnate, with about ten pairs of lateral leaflets and stout red-brown petioles; the leaflets are dark green, and conspicuously marked on the upper surface with oil-glands, pale or nearly white on the lower 22 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. surface, ovate-acute, often slightly falcate, long-pointed, rounded or subcordate at the base, finely serrate, stalked, four to six inches long and two to four inches broad. The flowers, which are greenish white and small, and inconspicuous like those of all the plants of this genus, appear on the Hakone Mountains at the end of August or early in September in clus- ters four or six inches across. The fruit I have not seen. In habit and in foliage this is one of the most beautiful. trees which I saw in Japan; but as it does not range far north or ascend to the high mountains, it is not probable that it will prove hardy in our northern states. The other Japanese species of Xanthoxylum are shrubs of no great beauty or interest. Simarube, a mostly tropical family, to which the familiar Ailanthus of northern China belongs, appears in Japan only in Picrasma quassioides, a member of a small tropical Asian genus, which, as an inhabitant of Yezo, seems to have strayed far beyond the limits of its present home. As Picrasma quassioides appears in the forests near Sapporo, it is a slender tree twenty to thirty feet in height, with a trunk about a foot in diameter. The branchlets are stout, dark red-brown, and conspicuously marked by pale lenticels. The leaves are unequally pinnate, with slender reddish petioles and four or five pairs of lateral leaflets, which increase in size from the lower pair to the uppermost; they are membranaceous, very bright green, ovate-acute, finely serrate, stalked, three to five inches long, and an inch to an inch and a half broad. The flowers, which are produced in loose, long-branched, few-flowered, axillary clusters, are yellow-green, and not at all showy; but the drupe-like fruit is bright red and handsome in September, when the thickened branches of the corymb are of the same color. It is, however, for the beauty of the color of its autumn foliage that Picrasma quas- sioides should be brought into our gardens. The leaves turn early, first orange and then gradually deep scarlet, and few Japanese plants which I saw are so beautiful in the autumn as this small tree, which, judging from its northern home in Japan, may be expected to flourish in our climate. It is a plant of wide distribution, not only in Yezo and Hondo, but in Corea and in northern and central China; it occurs on Hongkong and Java, and is common on the subtropical Himalayas, which in Garwhal it ascends to an elevation of 8,000 © feet above the ocean. To the bitterness of the inner bark, which in this particular resembles that of the Quassia-tree of the same family, it owes its specific name. THE HOLLY, EVONYMUS, AND BUCKTHORN FAMILIES. Japan and eastern North America are equally rich in species of Holly, there being thirteen or fourteen in each of the two regions. In Japan, however, Hollies grow to a larger size than they do in North America, there being eight or nine trees in this genus in the Mikado’s empire, and only four in the United States; and some of the Japanese Hollies are much larger and far more beautiful than any of our species. The most beautiful of them all is certainly the southern Ilex latifolia, an evergreen tree now occasionally seen in the gardens of southern Europe, where it was first carried more than fifty years ago. Although a native of southern Japan, Ilex latifolia appears perfectly at home in Tokyé, where it is often seen in large gardens and temple grounds, and where it occasionally makes a tree fifty to sixty feet in height, with a straight tall trunk covered with the pale smooth bark which is found on the stems of most plants of this. genus. The leaves are sometimes six inches long and three or four inches broad, and are very, thick, dark green, and exceedingly lustrous. The large scarlet fruit of this tree, which does not ripen until the late autumn or early winter months, and which is produced in the greatest profusion in nearly sessile axillary clusters, remains on the branches until the beginning of the following summer. [lex latifolia is probably the hand- somest broad-leaved evergreen tree that grows in the forests of Japan, not only on account of its brilliant abundant fruit, but also on account of the size and character of its foliage. It may be expected to prove hardy in Washington, and will certainly flourish in the southern Atlantic and Gulf states. Ilex integra is also a beautiful and distinctly desirable ornamental tree, often cultivated in the temple gardens of Japan, where it frequently reaches a height of thirty or forty feet. The leaves are narrow, obovate, three or four inches long, and apparently quite entire. The fruit, which is rather long-stalked, is nearly half an inch in diameter, and very showy during the winter. A variety of this species (var. leucoclada, Maximowicz), a shrub two to three feet high, with narrower leaves and smaller fruit, is a northern form, growing as far north as southern Yezo. On Mount Hakkoda, near Aomori, we found this plant in full flower and with ripe fruit on the 2d of October, and secured a supply of the seeds, so that its hardiness can be tested in the northern states. It must be remembered, however, that, although this plant, and several other broad-leaved evergreen shrubs, including two or three species of Holly, grow in Japan in a higher latitude than Massachusetts, they are protected, as Maximo- wicz has already pointed out, during the winter by an undisturbed covering of snow, and are not exposed, therefore, to the changes of climate which endanger the existence of many plants in eastern America. In Japan, moreover, plants do not suffer from the summer and autumn droughts, which often sap their vitality in the United States, and are often more directly responsible for the apparent want of hardiness of many plants than intense winter cold. A third Japanese evergreen species, Ilex rotunda, is also occasionally cultivated by the 24 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. Japanese, although I saw only two or three specimens of this plant; these were handsome trees, thirty to forty feet in height, with well-formed trunks twelve to thirteen inches in diameter. The leaves are broadly ovate to nearly orbicular, with entire thickened margins, and are very dark green and lustrous, although not thick nor very coriaceous. The fruit is smaller than that of the two species already mentioned, and rather oblong in outline. A very distinct evergreen species, Ilex pedunculosa, is exceedingly common on the Naka- sendé, the great central mountain road of Japan, in the valley of the Kisogawa. This plant is sometimes a shrub two or three feet in height, and is sometimes twenty or thirty feet high, when it is a well-formed tree, with a narrow round-topped head. The leaves are lustrous, two to three inches long, ovate-acute, entire, and long-petiolate. The stems of the flower- clusters, from which is derived its specific name and which are longer than the leaves, hold the large bright-red fruit, which is solitary, or arranged in clusters of three or four, well outside the leaves, giving to the plants a peculiar and beautiful appearance in the autumn. Occasionally a tree of this species was seen in the garden of an inn on the Nakasendo ; but it is evidently little known or cultivated in Japan, and apparently has not been introduced into western gardens. Ilex pedunculosa will certainly flourish in western and southern Europe, and I am not without hope that it will survive and possibly thrive in the northern United States, as in Japan it is found at high elevations in a region of excessive winter cold. Tlex crenata is the most widely distributed and the most common of the Japanese Hollies with persistent leaves; this plant is abundant in Hokkaido, on: the foothills of Mount Hakkoda, and on the sandy barrens near Giffu, on the Tdkaidd; and I encountered it in nearly every part of the empire which I visited. It is usually a low much-branched rigid shrub, three or four feet high; but in cultivation it not infrequently rises to the height of twenty feet, and, assuming the habit of a tree, is not unlike the Box in general appearance. The leaves, which are light green and very lustrous, vary considerably in size and shape, although they are rarely more than an inch long, and are usually ovate-acute, with slightly crenate-toothed margins. The black fruit is produced in great profusion, and in the autumn adds materially to the beauty of the plant. This is the most popular of all the Hollies with the Japanese ; and a plant usually cut into a fantastic shape is found in nearly every garden. Varieties with variegated leaves are common and apparently much esteemed. Ilex crenata and several of its varieties with variegated foliage were introduced into western gardens many years ago and are occasionally cultivated, although the value of this plant’ as an under-shrub appears to be hardly known or appreciated outside of Japan. Of the broad-leaved Japanese evergreens, I have the most hope of success with Ilex crenata in this climate ; and if it proves really hardy it will be a most useful addition to our shrubberies. Ilex Sugeroki, another evergreen species quite unknown, I believe, in gardens, may be expected to thrive in Europe, and possibly in the northern United States, as it is an inhabitant of southern Yezo and northern Hondo, where on Mount Hakkoda we found it in fruit, and were able to secure a supply of the seeds. It is a spreading bush five or six feet high, with stout branchlets, light green ovate leaves an inch long, rounded at the apex and coarsely crenulate-toothed above the middle, and with bright scarlet long-stalked solitary fruit half an inch in diameter. Ilex Sugeroki is an unusually handsome plant in the autumn, and of consid- erable horticultural promise. THE HOLLY, EVONYMUS, AND BUCKTHORN FAMILIES. 25 Of the section of the genus with deciduous leaves (Prinos), represented in eastern North America by the familiar Black Alder (Ilex verticillata) of our northern swamps and by the arborescent Ilex Monticola of the Alleghany Mountains, there are several species in Japan. The largest of these, Ilex macropoda, is a widely distributed, but not a common plant. I saw it on the cliffs at Mororan on the shores of Volcano Bay, on the hills above Nikko, and on the flanks of Mount Koma-ga-take in central Japan, although only a single plant in each of these widely separated localities. Ilex macropoda is a round-headed tree, twenty to thirty feet in height, with a trunk sometimes a foot in diameter. It is a well-shaped handsome tree, with stout branchlets furnished with short lateral spurs and ample, membranaceous, ovate-acute, long-petioled’ leaves conspicuously reticulate-veined, which turn bright clear yellow in the autumn, when they make a beautiful contrast with the bright red long-stalked fruit, which, although not very large, is exceedingly abundant. Ilex macropoda grows not only far north, as Professor Miyabe has recently written me of its discovery in the neighborhood of Sapporo, but in the most exposed situations and at high elevations; and there is no reason, therefore, why it should not thrive in our northern states, where it may be expected to add considerably to the beauty of shrubberies in the autumn and early winter. A much more common plant than Ilex macropoda is Ilex Sieboldii, although this species does not reach Hokkaido or ascend to high elevations on the mountains of Hondo. It much resembles our North American Ilex verticillata and Ilex levigata, although much less beautiful than either of these species, the fruit being smaller and less highly colored. Ilex Sieboldii is a tall spreading shrub, very common in low grounds and near the borders of streams, with slender stems often twelve or fifteen feet tall, small ovate-acute sharply serrate conspicuously veined leaves, and small scarlet fruit clustered on the short lateral spur-like branchlets. In the autumn the leafless branches of this shrub covered with fruit are sold in immense quan- tities in the streets of Tokyé for the decoration of dwelling-houses, for which purpose they are admirably suited, as the berries remain on the branches and retain their color for a long time. Ilex Sieboldii was introduced many years ago into American gardens by the late Thomas Hogg; it is an old inhabitant of the Arnold Arboretum, where it now flowers and produces its fruit every year. As an ornamental plant, however, it is less desirable than the related American species, and it will probably only be cultivated in this country and in Europe as a curiosity, or in botanic gardens. The other Japanese Hollies with deciduous leaves, Tex serrata, which is closely related to and resembles Ilex Sieboldii, and Ilex geniculata, a rare shrub of the high mountains, with black fruit, I was not fortunate enough to find. The flora of Japan is rich in Evonymus, there being no less than nine species found within the limits of the empire. Of these the best known in our gardens is the evergreen Evonymus Japonicus, now cultivated in all temperate countries, and its climbing variety usually known as Evonymus radicans. Evonymus Japonicus is a small tree generally distributed at low elevations, and more common in the south than at the north, although it grows naturally in the cold climate of southern Yezo, where, however, it does not attain a large size, and where its presence may be accounted for by the thick covering of snow which protects it in winter. The scandent variety is a hardier plant found carpeting the ground under the forests of 26 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. Hokkaido, and in the mountain regions of Hondo climbing high on the trunks of trees, which it encircles with great masses of lustrous foliage borne on stout branches standing out at right angles sometimes to the length of several feet; the leaves vary from an inch to four or five inches in length and correspondingly in width, and show the connection of the climbing plant with the arborescent type. There is a second arborescent Evonymus in Japan, a variety of the widely distributed and variable Evonymus Europzus, to which the name var. Hamiltonianus is given. This handsome plant, with stout branchlets, large leaves, and showy fruit, was introduced from Japan several years ago by the late Thomas Hogg, and it is now well established in the Arnold Arboretum, where it flowers and fruits freely. It is one of the commonest of the Japanese species in all mountain regions, and grows at least as far north as central Yezo, where it becomes a tree twenty to thirty feet in height. Evonymus alatus, a variable plant in the development of the wings on the branches, to which it owes its specific name, and in the size of the leaves and fruit, in some of its forms, is also very abundant in the north and on the mountains of central Japan. The wing-branched variety, which is the only deciduous-leaved Evonymus which I saw in Japanese gardens, where it 1s rather a favorite, is now well known in those of the United States and of Europe, where it is valued for the peculiar pink color the leaves assume in very late autumn. The variety subtriflora, a more northern plant, with slender terete branchlets and small fruit, is, I believe, unknown in gardens. It is one of the commonest shrubs in the mountain forests of Japan, and on the shores of Lake Chuzenji, in the Nikko Mountains, I saw it rising to the height of fifteen or eighteen feet, with slender diverging stems. Tn northern Japan there are three other species of Evonymus, all tall shrubs, with large leaves and large showy fruit suspended on long slender stalks, which may be expected to thrive in our climate, and to be decided acquisitions in our shrubberies. Of these Evonymus Nipponicus and Evonymus oxyphyllus produce globose fruit, and Evonymus macropterus more or less broadly winged fruit. Of Celastrus nothing need here be said of the now well-known Celastrus articulatus, which is one of the commonest plants on the mountains of Japan, except that its leafless branchlets, covered with fruit, are sold in the autumn in great quantities in all Japanese towns, where they are used in house decoration, for which purpose they are admirably suited, as the bright- colored fruit remains on them for many weeks. The second Japanese species, Celastrus flagellaris, I saw only in the Botanic Garden in Tokyo, where there is a single small plant; it is a common Manchurian species, but appears to be exceedingly rare in Japan. I judge that it has no particular horticultural value. Half a dozen genera of Rhamnacez are included in the flora of Japan, among them Zizy- phus, perhaps an introduced plant, often cultivated as a fruit-tree; Berchemia racemosa, a twining shrub with long slender branches, very ornamental during the last weeks of summer, when the half-ripened fruit, which is produced in large terminal clusters, is bright red ; two or three species of Rhamnus, of no horticultural value, and the curious tree, Hovenia dulcis, an inhabitant also of China and the Himalaya region, and in Japan often cultivated for the thick- ened sweetish fruit-stalks, which are edible, although insipid in flavor, and which enjoy among THE HOLLY, EVONYMOUS, AND BUCKTHORN FAMILIES. 27 the Japanese a certain reputation for curative properties. Hovenia was first introduced into Europe eighty years ago, and is occasionally seen in the gardens of southern France and Italy and of our middle states. In general appearance this tree, which is sometimes thirty or forty feet in height, is not unlike a large-leaved . Pear-tree, and as an ornamental plant possesses little value. THE MAPLE FAMILY. Iv arborescent plants of the family of Sapindacee, Japan is richer than eastern America, owing to the multiplication of species of Maple in the former country. Adsculus, on the contrary, which finds its headquarters in North America, where there are five species, appears in Japan in only one, — Aisculus turbinata. This, however, is a noble tree,—one of the largest and stateliest of all Horse-chestnuts. In the forests of the remote and interior moun- tain regions of central Hondo, at elevations between 2,000 and 3,000 feet, Horse-chestnuts, eighty to one hundred feet tall, with trunks three or four feet in diameter, are not uncommon. These were perhaps the largest deciduous trees which I saw on the main island growing natu- rally in the forest, that is, which had not been planted by men, and their escape from destruc- tion was probably due to their inaccessible position and to the fact that the wood of the Horse-chestnut is not particularly valued by the Japanese. In habit and in the form, venation, and coloring of the leaves, the Japanese Horse-chestnut resembles the Horse-chestnut of our gardens, the Grecian Alsculus Hippocastanum, and at first sight it might easily be mistaken for that tree, but the thyrsus of flowers of the Japanese species, which is ten or twelve inches long and only two and a half to three inches broad, is more slender; the flowers are smaller and pale yellow, with short, nearly equal petals ciliate on the margins; and the fruit is that of the Pavias, being smooth and showing no trace of the prickles which distinguish the true Horse-chestnuts. The Japanese Horse-chestnut reaches southern Yezo, finding its most northern home near Mororan, on the shores of Volcano Bay, at the level of the ocean; it is generally distributed through the mountainous parts of the three southern islands, sometimes ascending’ in the south to an elevation of 4,000 or 5,000 feet. There seems to be no reason why this tree, which has already produced fruit in France, should not flourish in our northern states, where, as well as in Europe, it is still little known. In northern Japan the fruits are exposed for sale in the shops, although they are probably used only as playthings for the children. To the Maples the forests of Japan owe much of their variety, beauty, and interest. Not less than twenty species are known in Japan, while in all of North America there are only nine, with six on the eastern side of the continent. None of the Japanese Maples, however, grow to the size of real timber-trees, or can be compared in massiveness and grandeur with some of the American species, which are unrivaled in size and beauty by the Maples of any other part of the world. Some of the Japanese Maples are exceedingly common and form a conspicuous feature of the forest vegetation, and others are rare and confined to comparatively small regions. Sev- eral of the species I did not see at all, and of others only one or two isolated individuals. The most common of the Japanese Maples, and the largest, is Acer pictum, a handsome small tree, not unlike our Sugar Maple in general appearance; it is one of the most abundant trees in THE MAPLE FAMILY. 29 * the forests of Hokkaido, where it occasionally attains the height of fifty feet, and forms a trunk eighteen inches in diameter. It is a tree of wide and general distribution in Japan, Manchuria, China, and northern India, and even in Japan varies remarkably in the size and pubescence of the five to seven-lobed leaves truncate at the base, and in the size and shape of the fruit. This tree must be extremely beautiful in May, when the yellow flowers are just opening, for the large lengthened inner scales of the winter-buds are then bright orange- color and very showy. The autumn coloring of the leaves I did not see; it is described as yellow and red. Of more interest to the lovers of novelties is Acer Miyabei (see Plate ix.), the latest addition to the list of Japanese Maples. It is a tree thirty to forty feet in height, with a trunk twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, covered with pale deeply furrowed bark, spreading branches which form a round-topped handsome head, and stout branchlets orange- brown in their first, and ashy gray in their second season. The leaves are five-lobed by narrow sinuses, with acute entire irregularly two to three-lobed divisions, and are cordate or almost truncate at the base, five-ribbed, conspicuously reticulate-veined, puberulous on the ribs and in their axils on the upper surface, and more or less covered with ferrugineous pubes- cence on the lower surface, especially on the ribs and veins; they are dark green above, pale below, and four or five inches long and broad, and are borne on stout petioles enlarged at the base, two to seven inches in length, and thickly coated while young with pale hairs, which also cover the unfolding leaves. The flowers, which are yellow, are produced on slender pedi- cels in few-flowered, short-stalked corymbs. The sepals and petals are narrow, obovate, acute and ciliate on the margins; in the male flowers the stamens, composed of filiform filaments and minute ovate anthers, are inserted between the lobes of a conspicuous disk, and are longer than the petals ; the pistil is minute and rudimentary ; in the fertile flowers the stamens are rudimentary and shorter than the ovary, which is coated with long white hairs. The style, which is described as somewhat shorter than the revolute stigmas, is caducous. The fruit is two inches long, with broad puberulous nutlets diverging at right angles to the stem, and thin, slightly faleate, conspicuously veined wings. This fine tree, which is closely related to the European Acer platanoides, was discovered a few years ago in the province of Hidaka, in Hokkaido, by Professor Kingo Miyabe, the accomplished professor of botany in the college at Sapporo and the author of an important work on the flora of the Kurile Islands, in whose honor it was named in 1888 by Maximowicz." On the 18th of September we stopped quite by accident to change cars at the little town of Iwanigawa, a railroad junction in Yezo, some forty or fifty miles from Sapporo, and, having a few minutes on our hands, strolled out of the town to a small grove of trees in the hope that they might prove interesting. In this grove, occupying a piece of low ground on the borders of a small stream, and chiefly composed of Acer pictum, our Japanese guide recognized at a glance a number of fine trees of Acer Miyabei covered with fruit, and surrounding the house of an officer of the Imperial Forest Department, who had been living for years in entire ignorance of the fact that he was enjoymg the shade of one of the rarest trees in Japan. The find was a lucky one, for Iwanigawa is a long way from the station where this species 1 Mél. Biol. xii. 725. 30 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. had been discovered, and mature fruit had not been seen before; and from these trees I obtained later from Professor Miyabe a supply of seeds large enough to make this Maple common in the gardens of this country and of Europe, in which there is every reason to believe that it will flourish. In the forests of Yezo eight other species of Maple occur. Among them, growing only in the extreme north and on the high mountain-slopes, are a variety of our Mountain Maple, Acer spicatum, so like the New England form of this common tree that it is difficult to distinguish the two plants, and Acer Tataricum, var. Ginnala, a common Manchurian tree, not rare in northern Japan, where it grows in low wet ground, near the borders of streams. This little tree is now well established in American gardens, in which it might be seen more often to advantage, as its flowers are very fragrant, and the leaves of few trees take on more splendid autumnal colors. In Yezo, too, Acer capillipes has been found; this is a species with small racemose flowers, and thin delicate nearly circular lobed leaves, deeply cut on the margins. On Mount Hakkoda, in northern Hondo, where Acer capillipes is extremely abun- dant at elevations of 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the sea, we found it in October, growing as a stout bush or bushy tree, twelve or fifteen feet in height, with delicate canary-yellow leaves, and secured a supply of ripe seeds. In Yezo, Acer Japonicum and Acer palmatum are both common ; these species, next after Acer pictum, are the most generally distributed Maples in Japan, and the only species which the Japanese cultivate at all commonly. They are both small trees, rarely, if ever, exceeding a height of fifty feet, and both, as is well known, vary remarkably in the size, form, and cutting of their leaves. A few of the varieties of Acer palmatum, particularly the one on which the leaves are divided into narrow lobes, and the one with pendulous branches, are favorites in Japan, where few of the numerous and monstrous forms of this tree, with which we have become familiar of late years in this country, are seen outside of nursery-gardens with foreign connections. Of these two trees the autumn foliage of Acer Japonicum appears the more brilliant; and some individuals of this species which we saw in October, high up on Mount Hakkoda, were as beautiful in color as a good American Scarlet Maple. These two trees have not proved very satisfactory in this country, where they have a way of dying in summer without apparent cause. This is due, perhaps, to the fact that nearly all the plants brought here have been raised from degenerate nursery-stock, obtained in or near the treaty ports ; and it will be interesting to watch the behavior here of plants raised from seed gath- ered in the forests of Yezo. For us these Maples have the advantage of retaining their leaves later in the autumn than our species, which are bare of foliage before the Japanese trees assume their brilliant colors; and this is true of many other Japanese and Chinese plants, like Ampelopsis tricuspidata and Spirea Thunbergii, for the autumn in eastern Asia is fully a month later than it is in this country. Acer carpinifoliam, which is occasionally seen in our gardens, is evidently extremely rare in Japan. There are a few plants in one of the temple gardens in Nikké, and I saw a single wild specimen hanging over the bank of a stream in the mountains above Fukushima, on the Nakasendo, and was fortunate in obtaining from it a good supply of seeds. In Nikko, Acer carpinifolium is a handsome round-topped tree, perhaps thirty feet tall. It is well worth Pruate 1X, @ C. E. Faxon del. ACER MIYABEI, Max. THE MAPLE FAMILY. 31 growing for its beauty as well as for the unusual form of the leaves, which resemble those of the Hornbeam, for which, at first sight, it might easily be mistaken. Acer Tschonoskii is common near the margins of Lake Chuzenji in the Nikko Mountains, and a thousand feet higher is found as a common shrub in the Hemlock forests which cover the slopes rising from Lake Yumoto. It is a small bushy tree, perhaps twenty feet tall, with bright red twigs and ample leaves, not unlike those of Acer capillipes in shape and cut- ting, although in autumn they turn deep scarlet. We could not find a single seed of this pretty plant, which has probably never been cultivated. Acer rufinerve, hardly distinguish- able from the Moosewood of our northern forests (Acer Pennsylvanicum), and Acer crategi- folium, both familiar now in our gardens, are rather common, especially the latter, in all the mountain regions of central Japan, and need no mention here. Among the rarer and less known species we found Acer diabolicum rather common in the neighborhood of Nikkd, where it is a round-topped tree twenty to thirty feet tall, very like the European Sycamore Maple in habit and general appearance, with dull yellow-green leaves four or five inches across, which apparently do not change color before falling, and large dirty brown fruit covered on the nutlets with fine stinging hairs. This seemed the least beautiful of the Maples which we encountered in the forests of Japan. Acer distylum I only saw in the Botanic Garden in Tokyd, and Acer pyenanthum, Acer purpurascens, Acer argu- tum, Acer parvifolium, and Acer Sieboldianum, the last, probably, only a pubescent-leaved variety of Acer Japonicum, I looked for in vain. Of Maples of the section Negundo, with the male and female flowers on separate plants and pinnate or ternate leaves, there are two species in Japan, — Acer cissifolium and Acer Niko- ense. The first is said to be common, and widely distributed from southern Yezo through the mountain ranges of the main island, but I only saw a few small plants in hedge-rows near Nikko, none of them half the size of specimens which may be seen in some Massachusetts gardens, where Acer cissifolium is a handsome compact round-headed little tree with slen- der graceful leaves, of a delicate green in summer, and orange and red in late autumn, and where it is one of the most distinct and satisfactory of the Japanese trees which have been tried in our climate. The second Japanese Negundo (see Plate x.), as it appears in the forests of Japan, is a distinct and beautiful tree, which, if it thrives in this country, will be a real addition to our plantations. Acer Nikoense grows to a height of forty or, perhaps, fifty feet, with a trunk twelve to eighteen inches in diameter covered with smooth dark shghtly furrowed bark, and stout rather slender branches, which form a narrow round-topped head. The branchlets are thick and rigid, and are coated at first, like the inner scales of the ovate-acute winter-buds, the young: leaf-stalks, the under surface of the young leaflets, the peduneles and pedicels, with short thick pale or rufous villous tomentum ; at the end of their first season the branchlets are dark red-brown and are marked with numerous minute lenticular dots. The leaves are ternate, with stout rigid petioles an inch or an inch and a half in length, and ovate or obovate, acute, long-pointed, entire, or remotely and irregularly coarsely and crenately serrate leaflets, the terminal leaflet being long-stalked, symmetrical, and wedge-shaped at the base, the lateral leaflets rounded on the lower, and oblique on the upper edge at the base, and sessile or nearly 32 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. so. The leaflets are thick and rather rigid, two and a half to five inches long, an inch and a half to two inches broad, conspicuously reticulate venulose, dark yellow-green on the upper surface, pale and coated on the lower surface with pubescence, which is rufous on the stout midribs and broad straight veins; or sometimes they are bright green on the lower surface, and glabrous, except on the midribs and veins. In the autumn the leaflets turn brilliant scarlet on the upper surface, but remain pale on the lower. The flowers are yellow, half an inch across, and nodding, and are borne in short few,usually three-flowered, subsessile terminal corymbs on slender graceful pedicels. The sepals and petals are ovate or obovate, rounded at the apex, and contracted at the base into narrow claws; in the sterile flower, in which the ovary is reduced to a minute rudiment, the stamens, which are inserted between the lobes of the conspicuous disk, are exserted ; the filaments are filiform, and the anthers are large and oblong ; in the fertile flower the stamens are rudimentary, and not longer than the ovary, which is coated with thick pale tomentum and crowned with a long stout style with revolute stigmas. The fruit is three inches long, with remarkably thick and hard-walled puberulous nutlets, and broad falcate diverging or converging obovate wings rounded at the apex. Acer Nikoense is not a common, although a widely distributed, species. I saw a number of plants in the temple grounds of Nikké and on the road between Nikko and Lake Chuzenji, a single tree near Agematsu on the Nakasendé, and ten or twelve more on the Yusui-toge above Yokokawa. According to Maximowicz,’ who distinguished this tree nearly thirty years ago, it grows as far south as Nagasaki. Acer Nikoense is practically unknown in gar- dens, although a well-grown specimen exists in the Veitchian collection in London, and a single small plant was sent from Japan two years ago to the Rixdorf Nurseries in Berlin. A figure of a leaf taken from this plant has been published in a German periodical. In September we hunted the Nikko hills in vain for a seed-bearing tree, and had given up all hope of introducing this species. One day late in October, however, we sat down on the rocks in the bed of a torrent far up on the side of Mount Koma-ga-take, in central Japan, to eat our luncheon, when our attention was attracted by some large Maple-seeds which were new to us floating in a pool at our feet. A search on the bank above discovered a single tree of Acer Nikoense, from which the wind was scattering showers of seeds. If we had been a day later, or had selected another resting-place, we should have missed one of the best harvests we made in Japan, as this single tree yielded at least half a bushel of good seeds. If Acer Nikoense proves hardy and flourishes in our gardens, it will be particularly remarked for the brilliancy of its autumn leaves, which are not surpassed in beauty by those of any other tree which I saw in Japan, and which, unlike those of most trees, are only bright- colored on one surface. 1 Mél. Biol. vi. 370; x. 609; Bull. Acad. St. Pétersbourg, Acer Maximowiczianum, Miquel, Arch. Néer. ii. 478, t. 76.— Franchet & Savatier, Enum. Pl. Jap.i.90.— Pax, 478. Bot. Jahrb. vii. 205 ; Gartenjlora, xli. 149. Piate X. ACER NIKOENSE, Maxm. C. E. Faxon del. THE SUMACHS AND THE PEA FAMILY. In eastern North’ America the small family of the Sabiacee has no representative, although Meliosma, which is mostly a tropical and subtropical Asiatic genus, also occurs in Mexico and Central America. In Japan there are three species of this genus, of which only one, Meliosma myriantha, attains the size of a tree. This species grows sometimes to the height of twenty-five or thirty feet, and produces slender trunks and wide-spreading branches ; its large thin leaves, which are sometimes eight inches long and three inches broad, of a light delicate green, are its chief attraction as a garden-plant, for the flowers of Meliosma are minute, and the terminal panicles in which they are gathered are loose and long-branched. Only a small portion of the flowers are fertile, so that the fruit, which is a small red berry- like drupe, is sparse and scattered in the clusters, and not at all showy. This plant is new, I believe, in cultivation, and its behavior in our climate will be watched with interest. It can hardly be hoped, however, that Meliosma myriantha will succeed in New England, as in Japan it does not range far north, and in central Hondo, where, although widely distributed, it is not common, it does not rise much above 2,500 feet over the sea-level. From the Rhus family we miss in Japan the Smoke-tree (Cotinus), a familiar European and western Asiatic type, represented, too, in eastern America by one of the rarest and most local of all our trees. Of the true Rhuses we have in eastern America a dozen species, including three small trees, while in Japan there are five indigenous species, and among them three which can properly be considered trees. The Japanese Lacquer-tree (Rhus vernicifera), which has played a conspicuous part in the development of the mechanical arts of China and Japan, and which is certainly the most valuable plant of the genus to man, is not a native of Japan, where it was carried long ago from China, and although much cultivated, especially in north- ern Hondo, I saw no indications that it is growing spontaneously or anywhere establishing itself in the forest. The Japanese Rhuses are not as ornamental in the autumn as our Sumachs, as none of them bear fruit covered with the long red hairs which give to the fruit-clusters of the Amer- ican plants their dense appearance and brilliant color; but the flowers of the Asiatic Rhus semialata, a common small tree distributed from the Himalayas to Japan, which are white, and produced in large terminal panicles, are much more beautiful than the yellow-green flow- ers of any of our Sumachs, and in August and September, when this tree blossoms in Japan, it is a striking object in the shrubby coppice-growth which so often covers the low mountain- slopes. In autumn Rhus semialata is one of the most brilliantly colored plants of the J ap- anese forest; and very few Japanese plants succeed so well in our climate. It is from a gall formed on the leaf of this tree that the dye with which married women in J apan diseolor their teeth, as a sign of domestic bondage, is obtained. Economically a more important tree, as from it the Japanese obtained their principal 34 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. supply of artificial light before the introduction of American and Russian petroleum, Rhus succedanea is less interesting in flower, at least, than Rhus semialata ; it is a southern species, still much cultivated on the southern islands, and in Tékyé seen only in gardens. In habit, although it grows to a larger size, it much resembles our Stag-horn Sumach ; the leaflets are narrower, the flowers are produced in slender few-flowered clusters pendulous in fruit; and the drupes covered with a thick coat of the pale waxy exudation, to which this species owes its name and value, are much larger. Rhus succedanea will, no doubt, flourish in the south- ern states, and it is not improbable that it will prove hardy as far north as Philadelphia ; it will certainly never be grown, however, in the United States for the wax it might be made to yield, and as an ornamental plant, while it is, of course, interesting, it is inferior to the Amer- ican Sumachs. Rhus trichocarpa, which, so far as I know, is not in our gardens, should be cultivated for the extraordinary beauty and brilliancy of the leaves in autumn, when they assume the brightest scarlet and orange tints. It is a slender tree, sometimes twenty or twenty-five feet high, and very common in the forests of Yezo and on the mountains of central Hondo. The leaves are eighteen to twenty inches long, with dark red puberulous midribs and broadly ovate long-pointed short-stalked membranaceous leaflets, slender panicles of flowers, which open in July, and pendulous fruit-clusters, with large pale prickly drupes ripening in August or early in September. Neither the flowers nor the fruit are attractive, and there is nothing very distinct in the appearance of this tree, except in the autumn, when, however, it is so beautiful that if it succeeds here I believe it will prove one of the best introductions of recent years. Of the poisonous species of Rhus I did not see the pinnate-leaved Rhus sylvestris, which is said to be a small shrub and a native of the southern part of the empire; on the Hakone Mountains, where it is reported to grow, I looked for it in vain ; but our Poison Ivy is one of the common plants in all the central parts of Hondo and in Yezo, where it grows to its largest size and climbs into the tops of the tallest trees. The leaves of the Japanese plant are larger than they usually grow on the American form ; they are thicker, too, and more leathery, and turn to even more brilliant autumn colors, often to deep shades of crimson, which are rarely seen on this plant in America. In October no other vine is so handsome in Japan. Japan is remarkably poor in arborescent Leguminose, with only three species in three genera, while here in eastern America there are twenty species in a dozen genera. The best known Japanese tree of the family is Albizzia Julibrissin, a small Mimosa-like tree which grows from Persia to Japan, and through cultivation has become naturalized in our southern Atlantic states and in most other warm temperate countries. Familiar now in this country is Maackia Amurensis, which, introduced many years ago from the valley of the Amour, is now sometimes cultivated in northern gardens. This little tree, which, under favorable conditions, rises occasionally to the height of thirty or forty feet, is common in all the forest regions of northern Japan, and is not rare on the mountains of central Hondo. The Japanese form produces larger and more numerous flower-spikes and larger fruit than the mainland tree, as we see it in this country ; and it is not improbable that it will prove a more desirable garden- plant. In Yezo, the wood, which is hard, close-grained, and pale brown in color, is manufac- tured into many small objects of domestic use, and is considered valuable. Puiate XL . 4 y : Fi i if h = Y I _<é £ G Y) i Rance