THE ROSE FAMILY. 



TREES of the Rose family in the flora of Japan are not numerous as compared with that 

 of eastern America, and among them there is not one of first-rate value as a timber-tree. 

 Horticulturally they are more important, and Japanese gardens owe much of their interest to 

 species of Primus. Although the most popular garden-tree in Japan, Primus Mume is proba- 

 bly not Japanese at all, but a native of Corea, where Mr. Veitch found it planted as a shade- 

 tree along the borders of the highroads. This is the tree which all foreign writers upon 

 Japan speak of as the Plum, although it is really an Apricot. In cultivation Prunus Mume 

 produces white, rose-colored, or red, and often double flowers, which appear before the leaves 

 in February and March, and are revered as harbingers of spring. The Mume is planted in 

 nearly every Japanese garden of any pretensions, and is one of the most universally used pot- 

 plants. Care and labor are often expended in producing dwarfed, contorted, or pendulous- 

 branched specimens, which sometimes command what seem exorbitant prices. 



A more interesting tree than Primus Mume is the Japanese Cherry, Prunus Pseudo-Cerasus, 

 the largest tree of the Rose family in the empire, and, next to the Apricot, more cultivated 

 for flowers by the Japanese than any other tree. In the forests of Yezo, Prunus Pseudo- 

 Cerasus occasionally rises to the height of eighty feet, and forms a trunk three feet in diam- 

 eter. In the character of the bark, in habit and general appearance, it much resembles the 

 European Cherry, the wild type of the familiar Cherry-tree of our gardens and orchards, and 

 as it appears in the forest it might well be mistaken for that species. The Japanese Cherry is 

 common in Yezo and in all the mountain regions of Hondo up to 5,000 or 6,000 feet above the 

 sea-level, and often forms a considerable portion of the forest-growth, although, in Hondo, all 

 large trees appear to have been cut. In the early autumn it is conspicuous in the landscape 

 and very beautiful, as the leaves turn deep scarlet and light up the forest before the Maples 

 assume their brightest colors. For centuries the Japanese have planted these Cherry-trees 

 in all gardens and temple grounds, and often by the borders of highways, as at Mukojima, 

 near Tokyo, where there is an avenue of them more than a mile in length along the banks of 

 the Sumi-da-gawa, and at Koganei, where, a century and a half ago, 10,000 Cherries were 

 planted in an avenue several miles long. The flowering of the Cherry-tree is an excuse for a 

 holiday, and thousands of men, women, and children pass the day under these long avenues 

 in more or less hilarious contemplation of the sheets of bloom. The flowers of the wild tree 

 are single, white, and of the size of those of the garden Cherry, but, not unnaturally, many 

 varieties have been produced during the centuries it has been a garden-plant. Bright red 

 and pink single-flowered varieties are common in Japan, as well as many double-flowered 

 forms. Of these several have been introduced into this country and Europe, and are now 

 well known in our gardens, where, however, they do not flower as freely as they are repre- 

 sented to flower in their native land. Primus Pseudo-Cerasus is a plant of cold climates, and 



