Coombe Wood. It is known to the Chinese as the “ Hou 
p’o.” <A valuable drug, which is distributed to all parts of 
the Empire, is prepared from its bark and flowers. 
The wood of Magnolia hypoleuca is light, soft and com- 
pact, and is easily worked. The Japanese use it for 
making tools, spinning-wheels, engraving-blocks, pencils 
and numerous objects for lacquering, while its charcoal 
furnishes an excellent metal-polish. It is the most valuable 
of all the Japanese Magnolias. Its native name in Japan 
is ** Honoki.” 
This species has been in cultivation in the United States 
since 1865, and its flowering there was recorded in 1888. 
The specimen figured was from a Kew plant raised from 
seeds received from a Japanese nursery in 1890. It is 
now about 14 feet high, and first flowered in June, 1905. 
Karlier in the same month a plant in the garden of B. H. C. 
Chambers, Esq., of Haslemere, obtained from Yokohama 
in 1884, also flowered for the first time, producing twenty - 
five flowers. 
Descr.—A large tree often fifty to eighty feet, and some- 
times a hundred feet high, with a stem up to two or three 
feet in diameter; branches widely spreading, long, silky- 
hairy on the young growths; bark smooth, brown, with 
conspicuous lenticels. Leaves deciduous, usually in tufts 
at the ends of the branches, shortly petioled, obovate or 
elliptic-obovate, frequently eight to fifteen inches long and 
six to eight inches broad, dark green and glabrous above, 
glaucous-green below, and more or less pilose, especially 
on the principal veins, rounded, or more rarely shortly 
cuspidate, cuneate, or sometimes rounded at the base; 
primary lateral veins eighteen to twenty-four on each side 
of the mid-rib. Flowers creamy-white or white, highly 
fragrant, six to eight inches in diameter, produced when the 
leaves are nearly full-grown. Sepals and petals obovate- 
spathulate, leathery, rounded, or slightly cuspidate. Fila- 
ments bright reddish purple. Fruit cone-like, ellipsoid, 
five to eight inches long, erect, red till mature; carpels 
more than a hundred, truncate.—S. A. SKAN. 
Fig. 1, stipules; 2, stamen ; 3, longitudinal section of two young carpels :— 
all enlarged. 
