THE HOLLY, EVONYMUS, AND BUCKTHORN FAMILIES. 



JAPAN and eastern North America are equally rich in species of Holly, there being thirteen 

 or fourteen in each of the two regions. In Japan, however, Hollies grow to a larger size 

 than they do in North America, there being eight or nine trees in this genus in the Mikado's 

 empire, and only four in the United States ; and some of the Japanese Hollies are much 

 larger and far more beautiful than any of our species. The most beautiful of them all is 

 certainly the southern Ilex latifolia, an evergreen tree now occasionally seen in the gardens of 

 southern Europe, where it was first carried more than fifty years ago. Although a native of 

 southern Japan, Ilex latifolia appears perfectly at home in Tokyo, where it is often seen in 

 large gardens and temple grounds, and where it occasionally makes a tree fifty to sixty feet in 

 height, with a straight tall trunk covered with the pale smooth bark which is found on the 

 stems of most plants of this genus. The leaves are sometimes six inches long and three or 

 four inches broad, and are very thick, dark green, and exceedingly lustrous. The large scarlet 

 fruit of this tree, which does not ripen until the late autumn or early winter months, and 

 which is produced in the greatest profusion in nearly sessile axillary clusters, remains on the 

 branches until the beginning of the following summer. Ilex latifolia is probably the hand- 

 somest broad-leaved evergreen tree that grows in the forests of Japan, not only on account of 

 its brilliant abundant fruit, but also on account of the size and character of its foliage. It 

 may be expected to prove hardy in Washington, and will certainly flourish in the southern 

 Atlantic and Gulf states. 



Ilex integra is also a beautiful and distinctly desirable ornamental tree, often cultivated in 

 the temple gardens of Japan, where it frequently reaches a height of thirty or forty feet. 

 The leaves are narrow, obovate, three or four inches long, and apparently quite entire. The 

 fruit, which is rather long-stalked, is nearly half an inch in diameter, and very showy during 

 the winter. A variety of this species (var. leucoclada, Maximowicz), a shrub two to three feet 

 high, with narrower leaves and smaller fruit, is a northern form, growing as far north as 

 southern Yezo. On Mount Hakkoda, near Aomori, we found this plant in full flower and 

 with ripe fruit on the 2d of October, and secured a supply of the seeds, so that its hardiness 

 can be tested in the northern states. It must be remembered, however, that, although this 

 plant, and several other broad-leaved evergreen shrubs, including two or three species of 

 Holly, grow in Japan in a higher latitude than Massachusetts, they are protected, as Maximo- 

 wicz has already pointed out, during the winter by an undisturbed covering of snow, and are 

 not exposed, therefore, to the changes of climate which endanger the existence of many plants 

 in eastern America. In Japan, moreover, plants do not suffer from the summer and autumn 

 droughts, which often sap their vitality in the United States, and are often more directly 

 responsible for the apparent want of hardiness of many plants than intense winter cold. 



A third Japanese evergreen species, Ilex rotunda, is also occasionally cultivated by the 



