THE ROSE FAMILY. 39 



collection of Hokkaido plants. The third Japanese Mountain Ash, Pyrus gracilis, is, I 

 believe, unknown in cultivation ; it is a particularly well-marked species, with woolly buds, 

 leaves only four or five inches long, oval or oblong leaflets rounded or acute at the apex, and 

 pale on the lower surface, orbicular incisely serrate stipules an inch or more across, minute 

 flowers in small few-flowered clusters, and oblong fruit barely an eighth of an inch long. 

 Pyrus gracilis inhabits mountain forests in Kyushu and in central Hondo, where, however, I 

 did not succeed in finding it. 



Aria is represented in Japan by two handsome trees, the first, Pyrus lanata l (I follow 

 Hooker in the Flora of British India in referring the Japanese plant to the Pyrus lanata of 

 Don, which grows also on the Himalayas from Cashmere to Kumaon), is not rare in central 

 Japan, where it is principally found at about 5,000 feet elevation above the sea-level on the 

 lower edge of the great Hemlock forest. Here it is a tree thirty or forty feet in height, with 

 a trunk six to eight inches in diameter, slender light red branchlets marked with white dots, 

 and oblong obtuse winter-buds covered with pale chestnut-colored imbricated scales. The 

 leaves are three or four inches long, two or three inches wide, broadly oblong to ovate-lance- 

 olate, acute at the apex, slightly lobulate and serrate, dark green and mostly glabrous on the 

 upper surface, and silver-white and more or less thickly coated with tomentum on the lower 

 surface. The flowers I have not seen, but the fruit is subglobose to oblong, one third of an 

 inch long, bright scarlet, and marked with pale lenticels. The second Japanese species of 

 Aria (see Plate xiii.) is a tree fifty or sixty feet in height, with a trunk covered with pale 

 smooth bark, and occasionally a foot and a half in diameter, slender branches, which form a 

 narrow oblong head, and red branchlets marked by oblong lenticular dots. The leaves are 

 ovate, acute, often long-pointed at the apex, rounded or sometimes wedge-shaped at the base, 

 serrate with incurved teeth, or often coarsely and doubly serrate above the middle, thin, or 

 subcoriaceous at maturity, dark green on the upper surface, pale on the lower, two or three 

 inches long and one or two inches broad, with thick prominent midribs, straight parallel 

 veins, and slender petioles one or two inches in length. The flowers, which appear near 

 Sapporo early in June, are borne in loose spreading long-branched few-flowered corymbs, and 

 are half an inch in diameter. The calyx-lobes are ovate, acute, densely coated on the inner 

 surface with thick white tomentum, and much shorter than the oblong white petals, rounded 

 at the apex and contracted at the base into short claws more or less covered with tufts of long 

 white hairs. The stamens are exserted, with filiform filaments enlarged at the base, and 

 rather longer than the two spreading styles. The fruit ripens in September, and is oblong or 

 subglobose, the size of a pea, light red, and conspicuously marked by the scar left by the 

 deciduous calyx. Unfortunately the name Pyrus alnifolia, which has been given to this tree, 

 is not applicable, it having been previously applied by Sprengel, in 1825, to an entirely 

 different plant, Amelanchier alnifolia, and as a new name must be found for it, I am glad of 

 the opportunity of associating with this fine tree that of Professor Kingo Miyabe, whose 



1 Pyrus lanata, Don, Prodr. Fl. Nepal. 237. Hooker f. Sorbus Aria, var. Kamaonensis, Maximowicz, Mel. Biol. 



Fl. Brit. Ind. ii. 375. ix. 173. 



Sorbus lanata, Wenzig, Linncea, xxxviii. 61. 



