44 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. 



of agriculture. Curiously enough, this North American and Chinese species was first made 

 known to the outside world by Kaempfer's description of the plants cultivated in Japan. 



Of the indigenous Aralias of Japan, Aralia cordata is an herb with large pinnate leaves 

 and long compound racemose panicles of white flowers, which are followed by showy black 

 fruits. In habit and general appearance it resembles our North American Spikenard, Aralia 

 racemosa; but it is a larger and handsomer plant, and well worth a place in the wild garden. 

 In Japan Aralia cordata is often cultivated in the neighborhood of houses for the young- 

 shoots, which, as well as the roots, are cooked and eaten. The second Japanese Aralia only 

 differs from our American Aralia spinosa in its rather broader and more coarsely serrate 

 leaflets, and in the character and amount of pubescence which covers their lower surface. 

 Aralia spinosa, var. elata, is a common tree in Yezo and in all the low mountain region 

 of northern and central Hondo. It usually selects rather moist soil, and sometimes, under 

 favorable conditions, rises to the height of thirty or forty feet and forms a straight well- 

 developed trunk. In Hondo large plants are rare, probably owing to the fact that the forests 

 on the low and accessible mountain-slopes are frequently cut off, but the shrubby covering of 

 such hills is almost always brightened in September by the great compound clusters of the 

 white flowers of the Aralia which rise above it. The Japanese form does not appear to be 

 much known in gardens, although young plants have lately been raised in the Arnold Arbore- 

 tum from seed sent from Japan a few years ago by Dr. Mayr ; and it is the Manchurian 

 variety, known as Aralia Chinensis, or as Dimorphanthus Manchuricus, that is usually seen in 

 our gardens, from which the American form, the type of the species, appears to have pretty 

 nearly disappeared, although the name is common enough in nurserymen's catalogues. 



But of all the Araliaceae of Japan, Acanthopanax is the most interesting to the student of 

 trees. It is a small genus of about eight species of trees and shrubs, all members of tropical 

 Asia, and of China and Japan, where half a dozen of them have been found. The most 

 important of the Japanese species are Acanthopanax ricinifolium and Acanthopanax sciado- 

 phylloides. Of the other species, Acanthopanax innovans is a small tree, of which I saw 

 young plants only on the Nakasendo, without flowers or fruit, and which is still to be intro- 

 duced. Acanthopanax aculeatum, a shrub or small tree, with lustrous three or five parted 

 leaves, is much planted in Japan in hedges, and is hardy in southern Yezo, where, however, 

 it has been introduced. Acanthopanax trichodon, of Franchet & Savatier, a doubtful species, 

 which, from the description, must closely resemble Acanthopanax aculeatum, we did not see ; 

 but Acanthopanax sessililiflorum of Manchuria and northern China, and an old inhabitant of 

 the Arnold Arboretum, we found evidently indigenous near Lake Yumoto, in the Nikko Moun- 

 tains, on the Nakasendo and in Yezo. 



Acanthopanax sciadophylloides is still unknown in our gardens, and we were fortunate in 

 securing an abundant supply of seeds. It is a handsome shapely tree sometimes forty feet 

 in height, with a trunk a foot in diameter, covered with pale smooth bark, short small 

 branches which form a narrow oblong round-topped head, and slender glabrous unarmed 

 branchlets. The leaves are alternate, and are borne on slender petioles with enlarged clasp- 

 ing bases and four to seven inches in length, and are composed of five, or rarely of three, 

 leaflets ; these are oval or obovate, long-pointed, wedge-shaped at the base, coarsely serrate 



