THE LAUREL, EUPHORBIA, AND NETTLE FAMILIES. 55 



The most beautiful, perhaps, of the Japanese species is Lindera umbellata, a southern 

 plant, found also in central China, which I saw only in the Botanic Garden at Tokyo, where 

 it forms a stout bush eight or ten feet high. The leaves, which appear in the spring with the 

 flowers, are lanceolate-acute, very gradually narrowed at the base, rounded at the apex, entire, 

 and often six or eight inches in length ; they are lustrous on the upper surface, and pale and 

 covered on the midribs and veins on the lower surface with rufous pubescence. The fruit, 

 which is a quarter of an inch in diameter and brilliant scarlet, is produced in great quantities 

 in dense axillary clusters on the branches of the previous year, and ripens in August and Sep- 

 tember. As I remember it, this seems one of the most beautiful plants which I saw in Japan. 

 It may be expected to thrive in the southern states and in southern Europe, but it will prob- 

 ably not be able to support the cold of the north. 



As a garden-plant for this region, Lindera obtusiloba is, perhaps, the most promising ; and 

 we were fortunate in securing a sufficiently large quantity of seeds, gathered at high eleva- 

 tions in central Hondo, to give it a good trial. Lindera obtusiloba (see Plate xvii.) often 

 becomes a bushy tree, twenty to twenty-five feet in height, with a short stout trunk, terete 

 brown branchlets, and conspicuous winter-buds covered with imbricated chestnut-brown scales. 

 The leaves appear with the flowers and are broadly ovate, palmately three-nerved, mostly 

 three-lobed at the apex, three or four inches long and broad, thick and firm, lustrous above, 

 and pale and often puberulous on the veins below. In the autumn, before falling, they turn 

 to a beautiful clear yellow color, and make a handsome contrast with the shining black fruits, 

 which are borne on hairy stalks in few-fruited axillary clusters, produced on short spur-like 

 lateral branchlets of the previous year. This handsome plant, although it grows to its largest 

 size in central Hondo at four or five thousand feet above the sea, does not, so far as we 

 observed, range north of the Nikko Mountains, and, therefore, does not reach Yezo, where 

 only Lindera sericea is found. This is a small slender shrubby species, with precocious 

 flowers, oval entire pointed leaves, silky-canescent at first, and at maturity dark green on the 

 upper and pale on the lower surface, and small black fruit. 



The other species of Lindera, which may possibly prove hardy in our northern gardens, 

 are Lindera triloba and Lindera prsecox. The first is a common plant in Hondo, where it 

 does not, however, ascend to the heights reached by Lindera obtusiloba, which is a more 

 northern and a hardier plant. Lindera triloba often grows twenty feet tall, and produces 

 trunks six inches in diameter, from which spring numerous slender divergent branches well 

 clothed with leaves. These appear with the flowers, and are elliptical or oblong, wedge- 

 shaped at the base, and divided at the apex into three acute lobes separated by deep broad 

 sinuses rounded in the bottom ; they are three-nerved, membranaceous, light green above, 

 pale, and covered below on the ribs with rufous pubescence, three or four inches long, and 

 two or three inches broad, and are borne on slender petioles. The fruit is half an inch 

 in diameter, and is produced in few-fruited umbels on short stout club-shaped stalks. 



Lindera prsecox, like our American species, flowers before the leaves appear ; it is a bushy 

 tree fifteen to twenty feet in height, with stout divergent light brown branches, and is con- 

 spicuous in midsummer from the large size of the flower-buds, which are then fully grown, 

 and which probably open during the winter or in earliest spring. The leaves are ovate, long- 



