January 8, 1896.] 



Garden and Forest. 



13 



The following table gives later statistics of the extent of 

 foreign trade in Lilies, as exported from the country at 

 large : 



countries. 1894. 1893. 1892. 



Australia 1,550 Yen*... 185 Yen.... 610 Yen. 



France 1,308 " .... 485 " .... 2S1 " 



Germany 11,261 " .... 5,562 " .... 2,620 " 



England 29,630 " ....38,754 " ....17,948 " 



Hongkong. ... 4,328 " .... 6,480 " .... 2,166 " 

 United States. . 19,410 " ....12,679 " •■•- 9.46' " 

 Other countries, 737 " 1,283 " ■■•■ 392 " 



Total, 68,224 Yen. 65,428 Yen. 33,478 Yen. 



The Yama-yuri, mentioned as playing such an important 

 ■part in exportation, is of wild growth, and, although its 

 good qualities are appreciated at home, the Japanese con- 

 sider it inferior for table use to the Ryori-yuri, and the de- 

 mand for it here is not so great as for the latter. During 

 an epidemic of cholera a few years ago it was, however, 

 sold in large quantities to supply the deficiency of starchy 

 food in the market. 



The readers of Garden and Forest may be interested 

 to know what care is taken in raising the bulbs. In 

 October or November, when the stems of the Lilies 

 wither, the bulbs are gathered ; but, as they are too small 

 for trade in this natural state, and, moreover, as they are 

 so often more or less bruised when dug out, they are planted 

 in a garden to undergo artificial cultivation for a year or 

 two— a process of fattening, as it were, for the market. 

 Those designed for export to European countries require 

 particular care, since they must endure the heat of the 

 Indian Ocean during their journey. Then, too, European 

 taste demands large bulbs, and plants with about twenty 

 fiowerSj which only bulbs of two years' artificial cultivation 

 can bear. Americans, on the contrary, like smaller bulbs, 

 and desire plants that bear only half a dozen flowers. 

 Bulbs of one year's rearing, therefore, meet their wishes ; 

 but these die the next year, and hence the regular annual 

 exportation of new bulbs to the United States. 



The Yama-yuri is indigenous to Kadsusa, Shimosa, Sa- 

 gami and other central provinces. The transplanted bulbs, 

 reared in a rich garden mold, become quite strong after a 

 year's growth, but those intended for food are not allowed 

 to flower. Sometimes, when the soil is not of the proper kind, 

 the bulbs, though they may grow large in size, are decid- 

 edly inferior in weight. Perhaps on this account they do 

 not do well in Europe, except in the Netherlands, the clas- 

 sic land of bulbs. Some of our best bulbs measure a foot 

 or a foot and two inches in circumference, and weigh as 

 much as a pound. 1 may state here that for choicest 

 cooking only the twelve best scales are selected from a 

 bulb; indeed, usually eight or nine scales only are taken 

 from each. The size and shape of the bulbs are most 

 remarkably affected by the time when the flower buds are 

 nipped ; and some Lily gardeners think the right choice of 

 this time is the most difficult and delicate part of their 

 labor. When the bulbs are harvested, they are cleaned 

 and then packed in boxes large enough to contain forty or 

 fifty. In price, they range for export trade, according to 

 size (taking for granted that the quality remains the same), 

 from 2.20 to 2.50 yen per hundred for the largest ; 1.20 to 

 1.50 for the next size — of, say, ten inches in circumference ; 

 and 60 yen or so for bulbs of a year's growth, which are 

 usually about eight inches. 



In view of the fact that the Lily, at least according to Dr. 

 Hehn {Cultivated Plants and Domesticated Animals in their 

 Aligra/ion from Asia to Europe'), came from Media by way 

 of Armenia and Phrygia, and that it now has found its en- 

 trance to America, it is interesting to note that the annual 

 importation of the same plant from Japan completes the 

 circle, as it were, in its journey round the world. Dr. 

 Helm's opinion as to the original habitat of this plant 

 is by no means a conclusive one. His arguments are 

 founded chiefly on philological affinities, and, though I in 

 no wise assume to contradict his assertions, I may serve him 



* A yen is equivalent to an American silver dollar. 



and the public by furnishing a few further linguistic state- 

 ments which may possibly suggest that the original habitat of 

 the Lily is still further east. The English word "Lily" comes 

 from the Greek "leiron" (White Lily), which in turn is 

 derived from the Persic - 'laleh." When we take into con- 

 sideration the absence of the sound of " L" from the Japa- 

 nese language and the substitution of " R," does " Yon " 

 become unlike "laleh"? " Yori" in its turn gives place to 

 " Yuri." Such a variation will seem the more likely when 

 we remember that in our language the change from ra, 

 ri, ru, re, ro to ya,yi, yu, ye, yo is of very frequent occur- 

 rence. Moreover, we observe that Dr. Hehn derives the 

 Greek "krinon" (Colored Fire Lily) from the Persian Susa or 

 Shushan. Now, in the oldest Japanese records the Lily is 

 called Sai, from which Sai-yuri. In some districts it is 

 called Saku or Sasa, thus nearly approaching Susa. This 

 philological digression may amount to little ; but I wish 

 only to pass it on for what it is worth to those better author- 

 ized than myself to speak in that line of inquiry. 



Sapporo. Japan. TliaSO Kilobe. 



Populus heterophylla. 



UNDER the name of black poplar the wood of this tree 

 is now manufactured in considerable quantities in 

 southern Alabama and in some parts of the Mississippi val- 

 ley and is used as a substitute for yellow poplar (the wood 

 of Liriodendron) in the manufacture of cheap furniture and 

 the interior finish of houses. The Swamp Poplar, as this 

 tree has usually been called, is one of the most interesting 

 Poplars of North America, where there are no less than nine 

 species. Although one of the rare trees of the Atlantic sea- 

 board, it was the first American Poplar known to science, 

 it having been described in the Natural History of Carolina 

 as early as 1733 by Mark Catesby, who published an ex- 

 cellent figure of a sterile branch. It long remained, how- 

 ever, very imperfectly known, and its true position among 

 the species of the genus was not established until Professor 

 Britton correctly described the structure of the flowers in 

 1887. One of the remarkable things about this tree is the 

 bark of large trunks. On other Poplars the mature bark is 

 divided into broad rounded, more or less connected, ridges, 

 which are roughened by small, closely appressed scales, but 

 the bark of Populus heterophylla is broken into long, nar- 

 row plates, attached only at the middle and sometimes per- 

 sistent for several years, so that an old trunk resembles that 

 of a Shellbark Hickory. This peculiar bark is shown in 

 our illustration on page 15 of this issue, made from a pho- 

 tograph of a tree in a swamp of the Wabash River in south- 

 ern Illinois, for which we are indebted to Dr. Jacob Schneck, 

 of Mt. Carmel, Illinois. 



Populus heterophylla is a tree often eighty or ninety feet 

 in height, with a tall trunk from two to three feet in diameter, 

 and short, rather slender branches, stout branchlets, marked 

 with elongated pale lenticels, and filled with a thick orange- 

 colored pith, and large, slightly resinous broad acute buds. 

 The leaves are broadly ovate, short-pointed or rounded 

 at the apex, heart-shaped, truncate or rounded at the 

 broad base, which is usually furnished with a deep nar- 

 row sinus, and are finely or coarsely crenate with small in- 

 curved glandular teeth ; they are thick and firm in texture, 

 dark, rather dull green on the upper surface, pale and glau- 

 cous on the lower, from four to seven inches long and from 

 three to six inches broad, turning dull yellow or brown in 

 the autumn before falling. The flowering aments appear 

 from March at the south to the beginning of May at the 

 north ; those of the staminate tree are broad, densely flow- 

 ered, about an inch long, and erect when the flowers first 

 open, and then gradually become pendulous by the elonga- 

 tion of the thick peduncle, being sometimes when fully 

 grown two and a half inches in length. One of their pecu- 

 liarities is the brittleness of the rhachis, which, as Prof-, 

 Britton has pointed out, is easily broken by the wind be 

 the ament has attained its full length : the scales are 

 narrowly oblong-obovate, brown, scarious, divided at 

 the apex into numerous long, thread - like red - brown 



