10 CONIFERS AND TAXADS OF JAPAN 



Of wild trees these are the largest I saw, but Sargent records some on the banks 

 of the Kiso-gawa, near Agematsu, 26 m. tall with trunks from 4 to 5 m. in girth. 

 At Hachiman Shrine, Kamo, in Satsuma province, Kyushu, there are several 

 magnificent planted trees of Torreya. Of these the finest is 28 m. in height and 

 has a slightly buttressed trunk which measures 5.5 m. in girth at 1.6 m. from the 

 ground. This is the largest tree of Torreya nucifera I saw in Japan, but here and 

 there in temple grounds were others nearly as large. The bark is nearly smooth, 

 pale gray to grayish brown and on old trees shallowly fissured into narrow strips 

 which flake off. The branches are numerous, stout, horizontally wide-spread- 

 ing and form a more or less oval crown; the branchlets are green and change 

 to red-brown or reddish purple the second and third seasons. This change of 

 color in the shoot is constant and by this character alone this Torreya may be at 

 once distinguished from the Chinese T. grandis Fort., in which the shoots do 

 not change color, but remain yellowish green until they finally become gray. The 

 leaves of T. nucifera are lustrous, blackish green and very pungent. The flowers 

 are axillary : the male on the shoot of the previous year, the female on that of the 

 current season and near the base. The male and female flowers open simultane- 

 ously. After fertilization the ovule grows only slightly during that season. The 

 fruit is sessile, ripens the second season and is obovoid to ellipsoid, from 2 to 

 2.5 cm. long; when ripe it is green, faintly tinged and striped with purple more 

 especially on the apex, splitting and exposing the seed rich in an oil which is 

 extracted for culinary purposes. The kernels are a favorite article of food. The 

 wood is yellowish to pale brown, firm and lustrous and durable in water. It is used 

 for making water-pails and for cabinet-work and for the pieces used in the Japa- 

 nese game of chess. Old trees of the Kay a sometimes have few branches and are 

 ragged in appearance, but usually the trees are clad with branches to near the 

 ground and are strikingly ornamental. In the gardens of western lands this tree 

 is not so well known as its distinctive beauty warrants. In those of eastern North 

 America it is rare. It is quite hardy and ripens fruit in this Arboretum where 

 it starts to grow very late, although its rate of growth is as rapid as is that of any 

 other hardy taxad. In the Hunnewell Pinetum there is a specimen 6 m. tall. 



The Japanese Torreya was first described and figured by Kaempfer (Amoen. 

 fasc. V. 814, fig. [1712]) under the name of Taxus nucifera, the name which was 

 later adopted by Linnaeus. Kaempfer's description and figures are excellent and 

 one of the figures shows the splitting of the fruit. According to Aiton (Hort. 

 Kew. V. 416 [1813]) it was in cultivation in England with Captain Thomas Corn- 

 wall in 1764. In 1830 it was introduced to the Botanic Gardens at Ghent by von 

 Siebold. 



TAXUS L. 



In his monograph Pilger considers all the Yews subspecies, varieties and forms 

 of the European T. baccata L., but types which occupy well-defined geographical 

 areas behave quite differently in cultivation and have characters by which they 

 can be distinguished in herbaria and in the field are best considered distinct spe- 

 cies. From this point of view seven species of Taxus are recognized. Four are found 

 in North America, two in eastern Asia and one (T. baccata L.) in Europe and Asia 

 Minor to northern Persia and Afghanistan. Of the four American species T. cana- 

 densis Marsh, is monoecious and is distributed from Newfoundland to the northern 

 shores of Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg and southward to New Jersey and 

 Minnesota; T.floridana Chapm. is confined to a limited area in western Florida; 



