THE WILLOW FAMILY. 71 



with the Japanese, and Salix eriocarpa of Franchet & Savatier, a species which we saw 

 growing by river-banks on the Nakasendo, and which looks too much like Salix alba to be 

 distinct from that species which might be expected to reach Japan. But the handsomest 

 Willow we saw in Japan, and certainly one of the most beautiful of all Willows, is Salix 

 subfragilis, which appears to be confined to Japan, where it was discovered in the neighbor- 

 hood of Hakodate by Charles Wright. We were first struck by the beauty of this tree 

 between Nikko and Lake Chuzenji, where there are a few specimens on the banks of the 

 mountain torrent which the road follows in ascending the mountains. It was at Sapporo, 

 however, that this Willow appeared in its greatest beauty ; here on the banks of streams Salix 

 subfragilis forms trees at least fifty feet in height, with short stout trunks three or four feet 

 in diameter, covered with thick deeply furrowed bark, and stout branches which spread nearly 

 at right angles, like those of an old pasture Oak. The leaves are oblong, acute, rounded at 

 the base, and coarsely crenulate-serrate ; they are borne on stems an inch and a half in length, 

 and are six or seven inches long, two or two and a half inches broad, dark green and lustrous 

 on the upper surface, and silvery white on the lower ; the stipules are foliaceous, obliquely 

 rounded, and rather more than half an inch across. This Willow appears to be one of the 

 most desirable trees to introduce into our collections, and the only Japanese Willow we saw 

 of real value, from a horticultural point of view. 



Populus is poorly represented in Japan ; the two species which are found in the empire are 

 both of Old World types, and there is nothing which corresponds to the Cottonwoods, which 

 line the river-banks in all the central and western regions of this continent. The Aspen of 

 Europe appears in one of its forms in Japan (Populus tremula, var. villosa), looking, however, 

 so distinct from the continental Aspen that it is hard to believe that it is not specifically 

 distinct ; it is the Populus Sieboldii of Miquel, the oldest name. This tree is not rare in 

 southern Yezo, where it grows to the height of twenty or thirty feet, springing up in consid- 

 erable numbers on dry, gravelly soil. We saw it in the greatest perfection on the plains 

 south of Mori, on Volcano Bay, and less commonly on the mountains near Aomori in Hondo. 

 Of the second species, the Populus suaveolens of Fisher, we encountered a few individuals in 

 southern Yezo, where it is probably near the southern limit of its range, it being a tree of 

 Saghalin and the Amour country. It is evidently only a form of the Balsam Poplar, which is 

 found in all northern regions, where, especially in some parts of British America, it constitutes 

 by far the largest part of the forest-growth. In Japan the Balsam Poplar grows to an 

 immense size, and some individuals which we saw were certainly eighty and perhaps a 

 hundred feet tall, with long trunks five or six feet in diameter, rising like sentinels above 

 the low mostly second-growth forests of southern Hokkaido. 



