82 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. 



form a continuous forest, but is scattered in groves of considerable extent among deciduous 

 trees and Pinus densiflora. It is this southern species, Tsuga Tsuga, which is cultivated in 

 our gardens, where it appears to be as hardy as our native species, which it surpasses in its 

 more graceful habit, and in its broader and darker colored leaves. 



Of the Firs of Japan we saw only four species, and one of these, Abies firma, only as a 

 cultivated plant. This is the largest and the most beautiful of the Japanese Firs, often grow- 

 ing in cultivation to the height of one hundred and twenty feet, and producing clean tall 

 stems four or six feet in diameter. Writers on Japanese forests speak of Abies firma as com- 

 mon south of latitude 40, north, in the upper belt of deciduous trees, but we never saw it 

 except in parks and temple gardens, or in the immediate neighborhood of houses. It is this 

 species which is chiefly called Momi by the Japanese, although the name is applied generally 

 to all Firs, and which, in Hondo, supplies the fir wood of commerce. This is soft, straight- 

 grained, and easily worked, and hardly distinguishable from the wood of the European Fir ; it 

 is used for building purposes and cheap packing-cases, but is not greatly valued. This species 

 has usually proved a disappointment as an ornamental tree in this country and in Europe, but 

 it is certainly, as it grows in Japan, one of the most beautiful of all Firs, distinguished by the 

 nobility of its port and by its bright green and very lustrous long rigid leaves, which are 

 sometimes sharply pointed, and sometimes divided at the apex. It probably needs a warmer 

 and moister climate than that of the northern United States in which to develop all its beau- 

 ties ; farther south it should, however, make a fine tree. 



The Fir of which we saw the most in Japan is the Abies homolepis of Siebold and Zucca- 

 rini. This is the plant which is now often cultivated in our gardens under the name of Abies 

 brachyphylla, a more recent name. It is the common Fir of central Japan, and abounds on 

 the Nikko Mountains between 4,000 and 5,000 feet elevation above the sea, although it does 

 not form continuous forests, but is scattered singly, or in small groups, through the Birch 

 and Oak woods which cover the ground just below the Hemlock belt. It is a massive 

 although not a very tall tree, apparently never growing to a greater height than eighty or 

 ninety feet ; in old age it is easily distinguished from all other Firs by its broad round head, 

 the branches near the tops of the trees growing longer than those lower down on the stems. 

 This peculiarity is seen even on young plants in our gardens, on which the lower branches, 

 which soon stop growing, are shaded by the longer ones produced above them. The pale 

 bark, the long crowded leaves, dark green above and silvery white below, and the large purple 

 cones make this a handsome tree. In cultivation here it is very hardy, and grows with remark- 

 able rapidity. The inaccessibility of the places where Abies homolepis grows in Japan pre- 

 cludes the general use of the wood, which we found employed in the little alpine village of 

 Yumoto for building material. 



The chief object of our visit to Mount Hakkoda, in northern Hondo, was to find Abies 

 Mariesii, which the botanical collector, whose name this tree bears, discovered there several 

 years before. It is common on this mountain at about 5,000 feet above the sea-level, scat- 

 tered among deciduous trees, and, so far as we observed, it is the only Fir of northern Hondo. 

 As we saw it, Abies Mariesii forms a compact pyramid about forty or fifty feet high, with 

 crowded branches covered with short dark foliage, pale below, and many large dark purple 



