THE WITCH-HAZEL AND ARALIA FAMILIES. 45 



with incurved teeth tipped with long slender mucros, membranaceous, dark green on the 

 upper surface, and pale or sometimes almost white on the lower surface, quite glabrous at 

 maturity, five or six inches long and two or three inches broad, with stout petiolules some- 

 times an inch in length, broad pale midribs, and about seven pairs of straight primary veins 

 connected by conspicuous transverse reticulate veinlets. The flowers appear in early summer, 

 on slender pedicels in few-flowered umbels arranged in terminal panicles five or six inches 

 across, with slender branches, the lower radiating at right angles to the stem, the upper erect. 

 According to Franchet & Savatier, the flowers are five-parted, with acute calyx-teeth, oblong- 

 obtuse greenish white petals, and two united styles. The fruit, which is the size of a pea, is 

 dark blue-black, somewhat flattened or angled, crowded with the remnants of the style, and 

 contains two cartilaginous flattened one-seeded stones. This handsome species inhabits the 

 mountain forests of Nikko, where it is not common. Later we found it in great abundance 

 on Mount Hakkoda, in northern Hondo, and in central Yezo, where it is common in the 

 deciduous forests which clothe the hillsides. Here it apparently attains its largest size, and 

 grows with another species of this genus, Acanthopanax ricinifolium, the largest Aralia of 

 Japan. I have followed the Japanese botanists in referring this tree to the Panax ricinifolia 

 of Siebold & Zuccarini, although the plant cultivated in our gardens and in Europe as Acan- 

 thopanax ricinifolium or Aralia Maximowiczii is distinct from the Yezo tree in the more deeply 

 lobed leaves with much broader sinuses between the lobes. A single individual similar to 

 the plant of our gardens I saw growing in the forest near Fukushima, in central Japan, but, 

 unfortunately, it was without flowers or fruit. And as I was unable to find any leaves on 

 the Yezo trees with the broad sinuses of this plant or any intermediate forms, it will not be 

 surprising if the forests of Japan are found to contain two species of simple-leaved arbores- 

 cent Acanthopanax, in which case it will be necessary to examine Siebold's specimens to deter- 

 mine which species he called Panax ricinifolia. 



In the forests of Yezo, where it is exceedingly common, Acanthopanax ricinifolium (see 

 Plate xvi.), as it will be called for the present at least, is a tree sometimes eighty feet in 

 height, with a tall straight trunk four or five feet in diameter, covered with very thick dark 

 deeply furrowed bark, and immense limbs which stand out from the trunk at right angles, 

 like those of an old pasture Oak, and thick reddish-brown mostly erect branchlets armed with 

 stout straight orange-colored prickles with much enlarged bases. The leaves are nearly orbi- 

 cular, although rather broader than long, truncate at the base, and divided to a third of their 

 width or less by acute sinuses into five nearly triangular or ovate acute long-pointed lobes 

 finely serrate with recurved callous-tipped teeth ; they are five to seven ribbed, seven to ten 

 inches across, dark green and very lustrous on the upper surface, and light green on the 

 lower surface, which is covered, especially in the axils of the ribs, with rufous pubescence. 

 The small white flowers are produced on long slender pedicels in many-flowered umbels 

 arranged in terminal compound flat-topped panicles with long radiating branches, which are 

 sometimes two feet in diameter ; they appear in August and September, and are very conspicu- 

 ous as they rise above the dark green foliage, giving to this fine tree an appearance entirely 

 unlike that of any other inhabitant of northern forests. 



Acanthopanax ricinifolium is common in Saghah'n and Yezo, and I saw it occasionally 



