CUPRESSUS OBTUSA. 



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is also the best to lacquer, a process carried to great perfection in. 

 Japan, and to secure a supply of its valuable wood, C. obtma has 

 been for ages past and is still being extensively planted on the lower 

 slopes of the mountains in the interior of Hondo up to 3,000 feet 

 elevation. It has also been cultivated by the Japanese for the 

 decoration of their gardens from time immemorial, and many distinct 

 varieties of it have been obtained by them ; amongst these are the forms 

 described above under the names of aurea, filicoides, lycopodioides and 

 pygmcea, all of which were introduced along with the species in 1861. 

 They clip, contort and dwarf plants of this species and C. pisifera 

 into many grotesque and monstrous shapes ; the illustration represents 

 a plant of great but unknown age so treated. 



Fig. 0(5. A Japanese specimen of a dwarfed plant of Citpressus obtnsa 

 or C. pisifera. 



Cupressus obtusa has its homologue in C. Lawsoniana of western 

 America, but unlike that species when transplanted to British gardens 

 it will not grow everywhere. It forms handsome specimens in good 

 retentive soils with a porous substratum such as are found in the 

 sandy loams of Gloucestershire and Devonshire, in the Kentish rag- 

 around Maidstone, on the Weaklen clay generally, and in the light 

 loams of Dumbarton, Midlothian, County Down and other parts of 

 Scotland and Ireland ; in chalk soils and soils with a limestone 

 substratum it usually fails entirely. 



