differs from all the Ternstremiace, indicating, however, 
no direct affinity with any other order. 
S. japonicus is a native of the mountains of Nagasaki, 
Kinsin, Nippon, Jedo, and other parts of Japan, where 
it is frequently to be met with in the gardens of the 
Japanese, and it has also been collected by Wright in the 
Loochoo Islands. The flowers are described by Oldham 
as beautiful and yellowish, and the bark as red; neither 
of which characters obtains in the cultivated specimens, 
the bark being brown and the flowers yellowish green. 
It forms a slender straggling bush, ten feet high, in the 
Temperate house at Kew, flowering in March, but it has 
not formed fruit. 
Descr. A rambling perfectly glabrous shrub, ten feet 
high, with slender cylindric flexible branches, and pendent 
branchlets. Leaves deciduous, four to six inches long, 
ovate or ovate-lanceolate, finely acuminate, serrulate, often 
oblique, bright green, thin and membranous; nerves many, 
oblique; nervyules transverse; petiole half to one and a 
quarter inch long. Spikes axillary, two to three inches 
long, curved, shortly peduncled, many-flowered ; peduncle 
and rachis stout. Flowers one-third of an inch in diameter, 
subglobosely campanulate, sessile or very shortly pedicelled; 
bracts small, scale-like, broadly ovate, acute, keeled; 
bracteoles two, twice as large as the bract, coriaceous, 
ovate, acute. Sepals oblong, two outer small, two inner 
twice as large. Petals broadly obovate-spathulate, concave, 
much larger than the sepals. Stamens eight, hypogynous, 
shorter than the ovary, filaments slender, the alternate 
ones shorter. Anthers small, didymous. Ovary obovoid, 
obtusely four-angled, contracted into short style; stigma 
capitate, four-lobed. Fruit globose or obovoid, one-third to 
half an inch long, tipped by the style, pericarp coriaceous, 
four-celled. Seeds very numerous; testa crustaceous, pale 
brown, shining.—J. D. H. 
Fig. 1, Flower; 2, two petals, stamens and pistil; 3, petal; 4, stamens and 
ovary ; 5, vertical, and 6, transverse section of ovary; 7, diagram of flower :— 
all enlarged. 
