HARDY CONIFEROUS TREES 45 



cum, Brongn. ; Cryptomeria Fortune!, Otto and 

 Dietrich.) China and Japan. 1842 and 1844. — 

 Delighting and thriving most luxuriantly in cool, 

 damp soils, the humid atmosphere of the British 

 Isles is peculiarly suitable for the successful 

 culture of this handsome and hardy conifer. 

 Cold, draughty, and exposed situations it, how- 

 ever, cannot bear, so that in planting this fact 

 should be borne in mind, while at the same time 

 few coniferous trees can surpass the present species 

 for thriving where the soil is stiff or cold and in a 

 sunless situation. When seen under favourable 

 conditions, the Japan Cedar is a tall, portly tree, 

 of somewhat broadly conical shape, with a clean, 

 straight stem, horizontally spreading branches, 

 often slightly drooping, with upcurved tips, the 

 lateral ones divided into numerous frondose 

 branchlets, thickly covered with dark bluish 

 green foliage. The rigid leaves are fully one-half 

 an inch long, incurved or awl-shaped, slightly 

 quadrangular, turned towards the stem, and indis- 

 tinctly marked with two glaucous lines underneath. 

 Both male and female cones are abundantly 

 produced, the latter being almost globular, about 

 three-quarters of an inch in diameter, usually singly 

 and erect, with the scales serrated at the edges, so 

 that the fully developed cone is rough and prickly. 

 Quite a feature of the tree are the male catkins, 

 which grow thickly in axillary spikes in the leaf 

 axils, usually towards the branch extremities. 

 A peculiarity of the cones is that in some instances 

 the axes elongate and produce foliage leaves at 

 their apices, thus imitating in a marked degree 

 those of Cunninghamia sinensis and several 



