188G.] THE JAPAN CEDAR. 695 



THE JAPAN CEDAR 

 {Cryptumcria Japonica). 



IT^OETY-ONE years ago, or during 1844, the Horticultural Society 

 of Loudon, tliroiigli their collector, Mr. Eobert Fortune, sent 

 seeds of the above interesting tree from Shanghai, the produce of 

 which has now in this country attained, in several instances at least, 

 heights varying from GO feet to 75 feet — rapid growth, it must be 

 admitted, for a Japanese conifer in Britain. Deligliting and thriving 

 most luxuriantly in cool, damp soils, the humid atmosphere of Great 

 Britain is peculiarly well suited for the successful cultivation of this 

 handsome conifer. When seen at its best, the Japan Cedar is a tall, 

 portly tree, of somewhat conical habit of growth, w'ith a clean, 

 straight stem of fully 100 feet high, and 4 feet or so in diameter. 



The branches spread horizontally, are slightly drooping with 

 up-curved tips, the lateral ones dividing into numerous frondose 

 branchlets, thickly covered with bright, glossy green foliage. 



Leaves fully half-an-inch in length, rigid, incurved or awl-shaped, 

 and oppressed to the stem, obscurely quadrangular, and marked 

 rather indistinctly with two glaucous silvery lines beneath. The 

 flowers are monoecious, or both male and female on the same plant. 

 Male catkins of an oval or oblong shape, and produced in great 

 abundance in the axils of the leaves at the extremities of the branch- 

 lets. Cones globular, about three-quarters of an inch in diameter, 

 terminal, singly, and usually erect. This distinct and beautiful 

 conifer, although at first branded with a semi-tender character, is 

 found to be perfectly hardy, sound in constitution, of very rapid 

 grow^th after it has become thoroughly established, and by no means 

 fastidious as to soil or situation, provided the former be naturally 

 sweet and healthy, or artificially made so. Although usually asserted 

 that this tree only thrives, or at least thrives best, on damp soil and 

 in low sheltered situations, a comparison of the trees growing in 

 Penrhyn Park and in other situations over the estate, hardly upholds 

 this theory, for some of our most luxuriant specimens arc growing 

 in deep, sandy loam, with the happy medium of neither excess nor 

 want of moisture. Judging from the specimens here, I should say 

 plant the Cri/jjtomeria in good dampish, but not stiff loam, where 

 partial shelter is afforded, and all the better if in a shadyish situa- 

 tion — by this I mean a northern or eastern aspect, where direct 

 sunshine is prevented. Better, indeed, than the generality of coni- 

 ferous trees, the Japan Cedar seems to thrive in the dense, still air 

 of mid-woodland, and is even not fastidious about the juxtaposition 



