Addisonia 13 



(Plate 87) 



MAACKIA AMURENSIS BUERGERI 

 Japanese Yellow-wood 



Native oj Japan 

 Family Fab ace; AS Pea Family 



Buergeria floribunda Miq. Ann. Mus. Bot. Lugd. 3: 53. 1867. 



Cladrastis amurensis Buergeri Maxim. Bull. Acad. St.-Petersb. 18: 400. 1873. 



Maackia amurensis Buergeri Schneid. 111. Handb. Laubh. 2- 16. 1907. 



This, a small tree, attains a height of twenty feet or more, with its 

 branches ascending and the white flowers in dense clusters. The 

 growths of the year are densely pubescent, later becoming glabrous. 

 The compound leaves are usually six inches to a foot long, alternate, 

 unequally pinnate, the rachis pubescent. The opposite leaflets, 

 commonly nine to thirteen and on villous stalks less than an eighth 

 of an inch long, have elliptic, oval, or ovate blades which are rounded 

 at the base and obtuse or acute at the apex, and are placed usually 

 at a right angle to the rachis; they have the upper surface glabrous 

 and dark green, the lower paler and densely appressed-pubescent. 

 The inflorescence is composed of three to five spreading or ascending 

 racemes arranged in a terminal panicle up to eight inches long; the 

 axes of the racemes and of the panicle are pubescent with short brown 

 hairs. The flowers, on spreading pedicels a quarter inch long or less 

 and covered with short brown hairs, are three eighths to a half inch 

 long. The broadly bell-shaped calyx is about an eighth of an inch 

 long, has a manifest dorsal swelling, and is appressed-pubescent with 

 short golden-brown hairs; its teeth are very short. The petals are 

 three eighths of an inch long or a little more ; the standard has a long 

 claw, the orbicular-obovate blade strongly recurved and emarginate 

 at the apex; the keel and wings have manifest stalks, the blades 

 lobed at the base, the keel folded, hood-shaped at the apex. The 

 stamens are ten, somewhat united at the base, curved at the apex. 

 The ovary is pubescent and bears a short glabrous style. The 

 brown flat pods are one and a half to three inches long and from a 

 quarter to three eighths of an inch wide, with commonly three to five 

 seeds, rarely fewer. 



When in flower an attractive and decorative tree, the blossoms 

 occurring in great profusion. It is entirely hardy in the latitude of 

 New York and would be an addition to any collection of trees and 

 shrubs. In the arboretum of the New York Botanical Garden there 

 are two forms of this Japanese yellow-wood; one of these comes into 

 bloom in July or early August, the other bears its flowers about a 

 month later, at a time when the fruit of the former is well on its way 



