52 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. 



leaves dark green on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, and often more than six 

 inches across. The white bell-shaped beautiful flowers, which are nearly an inch in length, 

 are borne in long drooping racemes, and are produced in the greatest profusion. The second 

 species, Styrax Japonica, is a common plant in the mountain forests of Hondo and in southern 

 Yezo, and is a shrub or occasionally a small tree twenty to thirty feet high. It is now well 

 known in American and European gardens. 



From the Olive family we miss, in Japan, Forestiera, an exclusively American genus, and 

 Chionanthus, which is eastern American and Chinese. Fraxinus and Osmanthus are common 

 to the floras of Japan and eastern America, and in Japan, Ligustrum and Syringa, both Old 

 World genera, are represented. In eastern America, Fraxinus appears in nine species ; in 

 Japan there are probably not more than two indigenous species, and only Fraxinus longi- 

 cuspis is endemic. This is a tree of the Ornus section, which is rather common in the elevated 

 Hemlock forests of Hondo, and ranges northward into Yezo. It is a slender tree, twenty to 

 thirty feet in height, with thin rigid ashy gray branchlets, black buds, and leaves with five 

 stalked ovate acute and finely or coarsely serrate leaflets, which in the autumn are conspicu- 

 ous from the deep purple color to which they change. 



Fraxinus Manchurica, which is also common in Manchuria, Saghalin, and Corea, is a 

 noble tree in Yezo, where it is exceedingly abundant in low ground near the borders of swamps 

 and streams, and where it often rises to the height of a hundred feet, and forms tall strain-lit 



o / o 



stems three or four feet in diameter ; its stout orange-colored branchlets, large black buds, 

 ample leaves, with lanceolate acute coarsely serrate leaflets, and great clusters of broad-winged 

 fruits, well distinguish this species, which is certainly one of the noblest of all the Ashes, and 

 one of the most valuable timber-trees of eastern Asia. For many years Fraxinus Manchurica 

 has inhabited the Arnold Arboretum, where it is hardy, and where it promises to grow to a 

 good size. Another Ash-tree commonly cultivated along the borders of Rice-fields near 

 Tokyo is referred by the Japanese botanists to the Fraxinus pubinervis of Blume. This has 

 every appearance of being an introduced tree in Japan ; but I was unable to obtain fruit or 

 any satisfactory information with regard to it. 



Syringa Japonica is rather common in the deciduous forests on the hills of central Yezo, 

 and I saw it occasionally on the high mountains of Hondo. In its native country, the Jap- 

 anese Lilac, when fully grown, is an unshapely straggling tree, twenty-five to thirty feet in 

 height, with a trunk rarely twelve or eighteen inches in diameter, and does not display the 

 beauty of foliage and the compact handsome habit which we associate with this plant in our 

 New England gardens, where it is far more beautiful than in its native forests. 



Osmanthus Aquifolium, or, as it is more commonly called in gardens, Osmanthus ilicif olius, 

 is usually supposed to be a Japanese tree. I saw it in city gardens, and in greater perfection 

 in the mountain region of central Hondo, where it is often planted near dwellings and by the 

 roadside, and where it sometimes grows to the height of thirty feet, and makes a trunk a foot 

 or more in diameter, and a broad compact round head, loaded in October with fragrant flow- 

 ers. But where I saw it, it had evidently been planted, and if it is a Japanese species, which 

 is doubtful, it is only indigenous in the extreme south. 



Ligustrum is poorly represented in Japan, and of the three species found within the borders 



