PICEA ALCOCKIANA. 429 



Picea Alcockiana. 



A medium-sized tree with the habit and aspect of the common 

 Spruce, and of which the average height is estimated at 60 75 feet ; 

 in old age free of branches for about two-thirds of the height and 

 with an irregular crown, the trunk covered with greyish brown bark 

 fissured into scale-like plates. Branches stoutish with distichous 

 ramification, depressed or horizontal. Branchlets mostly opposite, the 

 bark pale yellow-brown marked with rounded ridges running obliquely 

 downwards from the pulvini of the leaves, the youngest shoots 

 pubescent. Buds ovoid, with broadly ovate, obtuse, closely imbricated 

 perulae. Leaves persistent five seven years, spirally crowded around 

 the branchlets, linear, mucronate, four-angled (rhomboidal) in transverse- 

 section, 0*5 0*75 inch long, with a white stomatiferous band on the 

 two dorsal faces, bright green on the ventral sides ; those on the- 

 upper side of the shoot more or less appressed to it, those on the 

 under side turned away from it at an angle of 45. Cones ovoid- 

 cylindric, 2 3 inches long and 1 1*5 inch in diameter near the base; 

 scales broadly obovate-cuneate, with slightly erose apical margin, and 

 faintly striated on the exposed side ; seed wings obovate -oblong,, 

 two -thirds as long as the scale. 



Picea Alcockiana, Carriere, Traite Conif. ed. II. 343 (1867). Masters in GarcL 

 Chron. XIII. (1880), p. 212, with fig. ; Jo-urn. Linn. Soc. XVIII, 508, with figs. ;. 

 and Journ. R. Hort. Soc. XIV. 221. Beissner, Nadelholzk. 377, with fig. 



Abies Alcockiana, Lindley in Gard. Chron. 1861, p. 22 (Alcoquiana). Murray, 

 Pines and Firs of Japan, 66, with figs. Gordon, Pinet. ed. II. 4. 



Pin us Alcoquiana, Parlatore, D. C. Prodr. XVI. 417. 



Picea bicolor, Mayr, Abiet. Jap. Reiches, 49, Tafel III. fig. 8 (1890). 



Abies bicolor, Maximowicz in Bull. Acad. St. Petersb. X. 487 (1866). A., 

 acicularis, Hort. 



Eng. Sir Rutherford Alcock's Fir. Germ. Buntfichte. Jap. Ira-momi, Shira- 

 momi. And others. 



Picea Alcockiana is a rare and local species found only at high 

 elevations scattered through the Oak and Beech forests, presenting 

 in its home a wretched and forlorn appearance ; * it is confined to 

 the mountains of central Japan between the thirty-fifth and 

 thirty-eighth parallels of north latitude. On Fuji-yama it occupies 

 the central zone of forest vegetation at an altitude of 6,000 to 7,500 

 feet, mixed with Abies Veitchii, Picea ajanensis and Larix leptolepis 

 at its lowest vertical limit. Here the younger trees have a more 

 regular outline and bear much resemblance to the common Spruce, 

 On account of its scarcity, the wood is not much used. P. Alcockiana 

 was discovered by the late John Gould Veitch during an ascent 

 of Fuji-yama in September, 1860, in company with Sir Kntherford 

 Alcock, at that time British Minister at Tokio and whose name it 

 commemorates. 



As already stated under Picea ajanensis, seeds of that species and 

 P. Alcockiana were brought home mixed together, and the seedlings 

 were subsequently distributed under the latter name ; but the seedlings 



* Garden and Forest, VI. 494. 



