64 FOREST FLOE A OF JAPAN. 



eastern side of the continent. Europe possesses, also, a single species which extends to the 

 Orient, where a second species is found. The forests which cover the Himalayas contain two 

 species'; at least two or three others are found in the Chinese empire; and to the flora 

 of Japan six species are credited. One of the Japanese species, however, Carpinus erosa of 

 Blume, is a doubtful plant ; another, the Carpinus Tschonoskii of Maximowicz, from the 

 Hakone Mountains and the region of Fuji-san, I have never seen ; and a third, Carpinus 

 Yedoensis, a small tree cultivated in gardens in the neighborhood of Tokyo, is, perhaps, like 

 many of the plants cultivated by the Japanese, a native of China. Three species are certainly 

 indigenous to the Japanese soil. 



Carpinus laxiflora resembles, in the character of the bark, in the size and shape of the 

 leaves, and in the structure of the flowers, the European and American Hornbeams. It is a 

 graceful tree, occasionally fifty feet in height, with a trunk eighteen to twenty inches in 

 diameter, covered with smooth pale, sometimes almost white, bark, and slender branches. 

 The leaves are ovate or ovate-elliptical, rounded or subcordate at the base, contracted at the 

 apex into long slender points, and doubly serrate ; they are dark green above, pale yellow- 

 green below, three to four inches long, an inch to an inch and a half broad, and prominently 

 many-veined, and in the autumn turn yellow or red and yellow. The fruit is produced in lax 

 hairy catkins four or five inches long, with spreading oblique prominently veined bracts, 

 which are obscurely lobed, more or less infolded at the base round the fruit, and nearly an 

 inch lono-. This fine tree is common in all the mountain forests of Hondo, where it is most 



to 



abundant at elevations between two and three thousand feet above the sea ; in Yezo it reaches 

 the southern shores of Volcano Bay, where, near the town of Mori, it is common in Oak 

 forests, and grows to its largest size. 



The other Japanese species of Carpinus differ from Carpinus laxiflora and from the Ameri- 

 can and European species in their furrowed scaly bark, in the stalked bract of the male flower, 

 in the closely imbricated bracts of the fruiting catkins, which look like the fruit of the Hop- 

 vine, and in the form of these bracts, which are furnished at the base with a lobe which covers 

 the fruit, and is more or less inclosed by the infolding of the opposite side of the bract. On 

 account of these differences these two trees are sometimes referred to the genus Distigocarpus, 

 founded by Siebold & Zuccarini to receive their Distigocarpus Carpinus. 



The figure (see Plate xxi.) shows flowering and fruiting branches of this tree, a staminate 

 flower, and a bract of the fruiting catkin. Botanists now pretty generally agree that the 

 characters upon which Distigocarpus was founded are not of sufficient importance to justify 

 its separation from Carpinus ; and Distigocarpus Carpinus, if the oldest specific name is used, 

 becomes Carpinus Carpinus. By Blume, who first united Distigocarpus with Carpinus, it was 

 called Carpinus Japonica, the name under which it has appeared in all recent works on the 

 Japanese flora. It is a tree forty to fifty feet in height, with a trunk often twelve to eighteen 

 inches in diameter, and wide-spreading branches which form a broad handsome head. The 

 branches are slender, terete, and coated at first with long pale hairs, and later are covered 

 with dark red-brown bark often marked with oblong pale lenticels. The winter-buds are half 

 an inch long, acute, and covered with many imbricated thin light brown papery scales ; with 

 the exception of those of the outer rows they are accrescent on the growing shoots, and at 



