THE MAGNOLIA FAMILY. 13 



in the garden attached to the Agricultural College at Tokyo ; but I have never seen it in any 

 other, although it might well be grown wherever the climate is sufficiently mild to enable it 

 to produce fruit. 



Schizandra is familiar to American botanists as one species, the type of the genus, Schi- 

 zandra coccinea, inhabits our southern states ; in Japan two species occur, and one of these, 

 Schizandra Chinensis, which grows also in Manchuria, carries the Magnolia family farther 

 north than any of its other members. It is a vigorous plant, with long twining stems, and 

 small unisexual white flowers, followed by clusters of brilliant red berry-like fruits, which in 

 September and October enliven the forests of Hokkaido, where this plant is extremely common. 

 Schizandra Chinensis is now well established in our gardens, flowering freely every year, 

 although in the neighborhood of Boston it has not ripened its fruit. 



The second species, Schizandra nigra, is much less common in Japan than Schizandra 

 Chinensis, from which it may be distinguished by its broader leaves, larger flowers, and by its 

 blue-black fruit and pitted seeds. It grows in southern Yezo, where, however, I failed to 

 find it. Mr. Veitch collected it in September at Fukura, on the west coast of Hondo, and at 

 the end of October I found a single plant near Fiikushima, on the Nakasendo, in central 

 Japan, from which I had the good fortune to gather a few ripe seeds ; this interesting plant 

 has not yet been brought under cultivation. 



The forests of Japan are distinguished by the presence of a small family related to the 

 Magnolias, and composed of three genera, Cercidiphyllum and Trochodendron, which are 

 monotypic and endemic to Japan, and Euptelea, which has also a representative in the Hima- 

 laya forests. The plants of this genus are principally distinguished from the Magnolias by 

 their generally dioacious minute flowers, which are either entirely destitute of a perianth or are 

 furnished with a membranaceous f our-lobed calyx. For this family the name of Trochoden- 

 dracece has been proposed. 1 



Cercidiphyllum Japonicum is the most important tree of this family, and the largest and 

 one of the most interesting deciduous trees of Japan, which more than any other of its inhab- 

 itants gives to the forests of Yezo their peculiar appearance and character (see Plate vi.). 

 Here it inhabits the slopes of low hills and selects a moist situation in deep rich soil, from 

 which the denseness of the forest and the impenetrable growth of dwarf Bamboos, which 

 covers the forest-floor, effectually check evaporation. In such situations the Cercidiphyllum 

 attains its greatest size, often rising to the height of a hundred feet, and developing clusters 

 of stems eight or ten feet through. Sometimes it forms a single trunk three or four feet in 

 diameter and free of branches for fifty feet above the ground ; but more commonly it sends 

 up a number of stems which are united together for several feet into a stout trunk, and 

 then gradually diverge. The trunk of a typical Cercidiphyllum of this form appears in the 

 frontispiece of this work ; it is the reproduction of a photograph made on a hill near Sapporo, 

 and represents a large but by no means an exceptionally large trunk, which at three feet 

 above the ground girted twenty-one feet and six inches. 



In Cercidiphyllum the leaves on sterile shoots are either alternate or opposite ; in their 

 axils small acute red buds, covered with four to six thin scarious slightly imbricated scales, 



1 Engler & Prantl, Pjlanzenfam. iii. pt. ii. 21. 



