THE CONIFERS. 



IN cone-bearing plants Japan is somewhat richer than eastern America. All of our gen- 

 era, with the exception of Taxodium, the Bald Cypress of the southern states, are represented 

 in the empire, where two endemic genera occur, Cryptomeria and Sciadopytis, and where 

 Cephalotaxus and, perhaps, Cupressus have representatives. In cone-bearing species, too, 

 owing to the greater multiplication of forms of Abies, Japan is richer than eastern America, 

 where we have only two indigenous Firs. The genus Pinus, which furnishes a very consider- 

 able part of the forest-growth on the Atlantic seacoast, and which is represented here by 

 thirteen species, has only five in Japan ; and of these two are small trees of high altitudes 

 and one is an alpine shrub. Japan is richer than eastern America in Spruces, of which we 

 have only two, in Chamsecyparis, and in Juniperus. The two floras each contain a single 

 Thuya, a Taxus, a Tumion, two Hemlocks, and a Larch. In Japan, Conifers are more 

 planted for shade and ornament than they are in America, or, perhaps, in any other country, 

 although, except above 5,000 feet in Hondo, where there are continuous forests of Hemlock, 

 they form a small part of the composition of indigenous forest-growth ; and forests of Pines, 

 Spruces, or Firs, such striking features in many parts of this country, do not occur, except, 

 perhaps, in northern Yezo, which we did not visit, and where there are said to be great forests 

 of Abies Sachalinensis. 



The Japanese Arbor-vitse, Thuya Japonica, which is sometimes found in our plantations 

 under the name of Thuyopsis Standishii, and which is more like the species of the northwest 

 coast (Thuya gigantea) than our eastern Arbor-vita? or Yellow Cedar, appears to be a rare tree 

 in Japan, and we saw only a few solitary individuals on the shores of Lake Chuzenji and of 

 Lake Yumoto in the Nikko Mountains. Here it was a formal pyramidal tree twenty or thirty 

 feet high, with pale green foliage and bright red bark. 



Thuyopsis dolobrata, which is, perhaps, best considered a Cupressus rather than a Thuya, 

 is a tree of high altitudes. In the Nikko Mountains above Lake Yumoto it is common between 

 5,000 and 6,000 feet above the sea-level, growing as an under-shrub under the shade of dense 

 Hemlock forests, and here, in favorable positions, sometimes finally rising to the height of 

 forty or fifty feet, with a slender trunk covered with bright red bark, long pendulous grace- 

 ful lower branches, and a narrow pyramidal top. This handsome tree finds its northern home 

 on the mountains which surround the Bay of Aomori, in northern Hondo. It is a species 

 which evidently requires shade, at least while young, and even the older plants, where we saw 

 them, were always surrounded and overtopped by taller trees. The elevation at which this 

 tree grows indicates that it should prove hardy here if properly protected from the sun, espe- 

 cially during the winter, for in Japan the young plants are not only shaded by the coniferous 

 forest above them, but are buried during several months under a continuous covering of 

 snow. Under proper conditions this tree will be found to be one of the best plants to form 



