THE SUMACHS AND THE PEA FAMILY. 



IN eastern North America the small family of the Sabiacese has no representative, 

 although Meliosma, which is mostly a tropical and subtropical Asiatic genus, also occurs in 

 Mexico and Central America. In Japan there are three species of this genus, of which only 

 one, Meliosma myriantha, attains the size of a tree. This species grows sometimes to the 

 height of twenty-five or thirty feet, and produces slender trunks and wide-spreading branches ; 

 its large thin leaves, which are sometimes eight inches long and three inches broad, of a light 

 delicate green, are its chief attraction as a garden-plant, for the flowers of Meliosma are 

 minute, and the terminal panicles in which they are gathered are loose and long-branched. 

 Only a small portion of the flowers are fertile, so that the fruit, which is a small red berry- 

 like drupe, is sparse and scattered in the clusters, and not at all showy. This plant is new, I 

 believe, in cultivation, and its behavior in our climate will be watched with interest. It can 

 hardly be hoped, however, that Meliosma myriantha will succeed in New England, as in Japan 

 it does not range far north, and in central Hondo, where, although widely distributed, it is 

 not common, it does not rise much above 2,500 feet over the sea-level. 



From the Rhus family we miss in Japan the Smoke-tree (Cotinus), a familiar European and 

 western Asiatic type, represented, too, in eastern America by one of the rarest and most local 

 of all our trees. Of the true Rhuses we have in eastern America a dozen species, including 

 three small trees, while in Japan there are five indigenous species, and among them three 

 which can properly be considered trees. The Japanese Lacquer-tree (Rhus vernicifera), which 

 has played a conspicuous part in the development of the mechanical arts of China and Japan, 

 and which is certainly the most valuable plant of the genus to man, is not a native of Japan, 

 where it was carried long ago from China, and although much cultivated, especially in north- 

 ern Hondo, I saw no indications that it is growing spontaneously or anywhere establishing 

 itself in the forest. 



The Japanese Rhuses are not as ornamental in the autumn as our Sumachs, as none of 

 them bear fruit covered with the long red hairs which give to the fruit-clusters of the Amer- 

 ican plants their dense appearance and brilliant color ; but the flowers of the Asiatic Rhus 

 semialata, a common small tree distributed from the Himalayas to Japan, which are white, 

 and produced in large terminal panicles, are much more beautiful than the yellow-green flow- 

 ers of any of our Sumachs, and in August and September, when this tree blossoms in Japan, 

 it is a striking object in the shrubby coppice-growth which so often covers the low mountain- 

 slopes. In autumn Rhus semialata is one of the most brilliantly colored plants of the Jap- 

 anese forest ; and very few Japanese plants succeed so well in our climate. It is from a gall 

 formed on the leaf of this tree that the dye with which married women in Japan discolor 

 their teeth, as a sign of domestic bondage, is obtained. 



Economically a more important tree, as from it the Japanese obtained their principal 



