496 swingle: Chinese tree of heaven 



probably belonged to the same genus. Rumphius, in his Her- 

 barium Amboinense, says: 12 "Arbor coeli is called in Malay Caju 

 langit, in Amboyna, Aylanto, that is, heaven-tree, 13 as if they 

 would accuse it of lacerating the heaven because of its height." 

 Rumphius had previously said it was the tallest tree known to 

 him in Amboyna. 



Rumphius' species (Ailanthus Pongelion Gmel., figured in Herb. 

 Amboin 3, pi. 132) was at first confounded with the Chinese tree 

 and probably this led to the transfer of the Malayan name, 

 "tree of heaven," to the Chinese species. Even without this 

 confusion of the species, the name "tree of heaven" could easily 

 be formed by a mere translation of the generic name. 



Curiously enough, although the modern Chinese name around 



Peking is Ch'ou Ch'un ijl ^ or stinking ch'un (in contrast to 

 H siang Ch'un ^ 7^ or fragrant ch'un, Cedrela sinensis Juss.), it 

 is known to the Chinese poets of older times as Shen shu jpij} |^.| 



or God's tree. It is interesting to note that this old Chinese 

 epithet is exactly translated in the German Gotterbaum. Su Shih 

 (or Su Tung-po), 1036-1101 A. D., a famous scholar of the Sung 

 dynasty, wrote a stanza beginning, "Since ancient times it was 

 called God's tree," and goes on to lament the departure of the 

 spirit formerly supposed to dwell within this tree. (Imperial 

 Encyclopedia, T'u shu chi ch'eng, Science, Vegetable Kingdom, 

 Bk. 253). In the Book of History and in other ancient Chinese 



works this plant is called Ch'u ||E , which name is still used 



in some parts of China at the present time. 



THE TREE OF HEAVEN IN THE UNITED STATES 



According to A. J. Downing, the Tree of Heaven was intro- 

 duced directly from China into Rhode Island under the name 



12 3: 206. According to the Century Dictionary (1913 Edition, 1: 121) the 

 native name aylanto is apparently derived from ai lanit, a Moluccan form of the 

 Malayan kdyu langit, tree of the sky. 



13 Possibly this ties up with the "heaven-tree," said by James H. Murray (New 

 English Diet., 5: 177) to be a "mythical tree, which figures in some Malay and 

 Polynesian beliefs, as reaching from the under-world to the earth, or from earth 

 to heaven." 



