January i8, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



27 



generally followed the example of these early travelers and 

 included these plants in the flora of Japan. Indeed, it is only 

 very recently that it has been possible to travel freely in 

 all parts of the empire and to study satisfactorily the char- 

 acter and distribution of its flora. 



The list of Chinese and Corean trees cultivated in Japan, 

 and usually enumerated in Floras of the empires, includes 

 Mag-nolia conspicua, M. parvifolia, M. Watsoni, Ster- 

 culia platinifolia, Cedrela Chinensis, Zizyphus vulgaris, 

 Koelreuteria paniculata, Sapindus Mukirosi, Acer trifidum, 

 Rhus vernicifera, Sophora Japonica,* Prunus Mume, Pyrus 

 Sinensis, Crataegus cuneata, Eriobotrya Japonica, Liquid- 

 ambar Formosana (Maximowiczii), Cornus officinalis, 

 Diospyros Kaki, and probably D. Lotus, Chionanthus retusa, 

 Paulovvnia imperialis, Catalpa Kaempferi, Lindera strych- 

 nifolia, Ulmus parvifoha, Thuja orientalis, Ginkgo biloba, 

 Podocarpus Nageia, P. macrophylla and Pinus Koraiensis. 

 If these species,f twenty-nine in number, are deducted 

 from Professor Gray's enumeration, there will remain 139 

 species in fifty-three genera, or a smaller number of both 

 genera and species than he credited to eastern America. 

 This, however, does not alter the fact that the Japanese 

 region for its area is unsurpassed in the number of trees 

 which inhabit its forests. 



Indeed, the superiority of the forests of Japan in the num- 

 ber of their species over those of every other temperate 

 region, eastern North America included, in proportion to 

 their area, has certainly never been fully stated as, 

 perhaps, I shall be able to show, having lately returned 

 from a somewhat extended journey through the northern 

 and central islands, undertaken for the purpose of studying 

 Japanese trees, in their relations to those of North America. 

 The case, perhaps, can best be stated by following Professor 

 Gray's method and making a new census of the inhab- 

 itants of the Japan-Manchurian forests and of those of 

 eastern America, as these two regions extend through 

 nearly the same degrees of latitude and possess somewhat 

 similar climates, although Japan has the advantage of a 

 more equally distributed rainfall and a more equable cli- 

 mate, and offers a far more broken surface than eastern 

 America, with mountains twice the height of any of the 

 Appalachian peaks. 



As the true Atlantic forest extends west to the eastern 

 rim of the midcontinental plateau, the American region, 

 for purposes of proper comparison, may be extended to 

 the western limit of the Atlantic tree-growth, although this 

 will add to the American side of the account a few genera 

 and species of Texas, like Koeberlinia, Ungnardia, Parkin- 

 sonia, Prosopis, Acacia, Chilopsis, and Pithecolobium, 

 which Professor Gray certainly did not include in the enu- 

 meration from which his deductions were made. The south 

 Florida species are again omitted, and, as in The Silva 

 of North America, those plants are considered trees which 

 grow up with a single stem. In eastern North America, 

 that is in the whole region north of Mexico and east of the 

 treeless plateau of the centre of the continent, but exclusive 

 of south Florida, 223 species of trees, divided among 133 

 genera, are now known. The Japan-Manchurian region 

 includes eastern Manchuria, the Kurile Islands, Saghalin, 

 and the four great Japanese islands, but for our purpose 

 does not include the Loochoo group, which, although it 

 forms a part of the Japanese empire politically, is tropical 

 and subtropical in the character of its vegetation, which, 

 moreover, is still imperfectly understood. In this narrow 



* Even Rein [The Industries of Japati), usually a most careful observer, 

 states that Sophorajaponica is " scattered through the entire country, especially in 

 the foUaceous forests of the north." He had evidently confoundea Sophoi'a with 

 Maackia, a common and widely spread tree, especially in Yezo. Sophora, which 

 is only seen occasionally in gardens, does not appear to be a particularly popular 

 plant with the Japanese. 



t A number ot shrubs, familiar in western gardens, and usually supposed to be 

 Japanese, from the fact that they were first known in Japan or first sent from that 

 country, are also Chinese or Corean, and in Japan are only found in gardens or in 

 the neighborhood of habitations. Among them are Clematis patens, Magnolia 

 stellata, M. obovata, Berberis Japonica, Citrus Japonica, Prunus tomentosa, P. 

 Japonica, Spirtea Thunbergli, Rhodotypos kerrioides.Cercis Chinensis orjaponica, 

 Enkianlhus Japonicus, Forsythia suspensa, Olea fragrans, Tecoma grandiflora. 

 Daphne Genkwa, Edgworthia papyrifera, Wikstrcemia Japonica. Nandina do- 

 mestica, the most universally cultivated ornamental plant in Japan, is probably 

 not a Japanese plant, although Rein states that it grows wild in Shikoku. 



eastern border of Asia there are now known 241 arborescent 

 species divided among ninety-nine genera. The extra 

 Japanese portion of the region contributes but little to the 

 enumeration. In Saghalin, Fr. Schmidt * found only three 

 trees which do not inhabit Yezo, and in Matichuria, accord- 

 ing to Maximowiczf and Schmidt, J there are only eighteen 

 trees which do not also occur in Saghalien or in the north- 

 ern Japanese islands. In the four islands of Yezo, Hondo, 

 Shikoku and Kyushu, therefore, we now find 220 arbor- 

 escent species divided among ninety-nine genera, or only 

 three less than occur in the immense territory which ex- 

 tends from Labrador to the Rio Grande and from the shores 

 of the Atlantic to the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. 

 Neither Cycas revoluta nor Trachycarpus (Chamaerops) ex- 

 celsa is included in the Japanese list, as the best observers 

 appear to agree in thinking that these two familiar plants 

 are not indigenous to Japan proper. I have omitted, more- 

 over, a few doubtful species from the Japan enumeration, 

 like Fagus Japonica, Maxm., and Abies umbellata, Mayr, 

 of which I could learn nothing in Japan, so that it is more 

 probable that the number of Japanese trees will be increased 

 than that any addition will be made to the silva of eastern 

 America. 



The proportion of trees to the whole flora of Japan is re- 

 markable, being about i to 10. 14, the number of indigenous 

 flowering plants and vascicular cryptogams being not very 

 far from 2, 500 species. Still more remarkable is the large 

 proportion of woody plants to the whole flora. In Japan 

 proper there are certainly not less than 325 species of 

 shrubs, or 550 woody plants in all, or one woody plant in 

 every 4.55 of the whole flora — a much larger percentage 

 than occurs in any part of North America. 



The segregation of arborescent species in Japan is, how- 

 ever, the most striking feature in the silva of that country. 

 This is most noticeable in Yezo, where probably more species 

 of trees are growing naturally in a small area than in any 

 other one place outside the tropics. Near Sapparo, the capital 

 of the island, in ascending a hill which rises only 500 feet 

 above the level of the ocean, I noticed the following trees : 

 Magnohahypoleuca, M. Kobus, Cercidiphyllum Japonicum, 

 Tilia cordata, T. Miqueliana, Phellodendron Amurense, 

 Picrasma ailanthoides, Evonymus Europaeus, var. Hamil- 

 tonianus, Acer pictum, A. Japonicum, A. palmatum, Rhus 

 semi-alata, R. tricocarpa, Maackia Amurensis, Prunus 

 Pseudo-Cerasus, P. Ssiori, P. aucuparia, Pyrus Toringo, P. 

 alnifolia, Hydrangea paniculata, Aralia spinosa, var. canes- 

 cens, Acanthopanax ricinifolia, A. sciadophylloides, Cornus 

 macrophylla, Syringa Japonica, Fraxinus Mandshurica, F. 

 longicuspis, Clerodendron trichotomum, Ulmus campestris, 

 U. montana, var. laciniata, Morus alba, Juglans Sieboldiana, 

 Betula alba, B. alba, var. Tauschii, B. alba, var. verrucosa, 

 B. Ermanni, B. Maximowicziana, Alnus incana, Carpinus 

 cordata, Ostrya Japonica, Quercus crispula, Q. grosseser- 

 rata, Castanea vulgaris, Populus tremula, Picea Ajanensis, 

 Abies Sachaliensis — forty-six species and varieties. Within 

 five miles of this hill also grow Acer spicatum, var. Kurun- 

 duense, A. Tartaricum, var. Ginnala, Styrax Obassia, Apha- 

 nanthe aspera, Quercus dentata, Q. glandulifera, Alnus 

 Japonica, Salix subfragilis, S. Caprea, S. stipularis, S. acuti- 

 folia, S. viminalis and Populus suaveolans — in all sixty- 

 two species and varieties, or more than a quarter of all the 

 trees of the empire crowded into an area only a few 

 miles square, in the latitude of northern New England 

 in the whole of which north of Cape Cod there are only 

 about the same number of trees. 



A further examination of the trees of the two countries 

 shows that, although the Japan-Manchurian region pos- 

 sesses more arborescent species than eastern America, the 

 silva of the latter is much richer in genera — 132, to ninety- 

 nine in Japan-Manchuria. Forty-four genera have arbor- 

 escent species in the two regions ; forty-five genera with 

 Japanese representatives have none in the flora of eastern 

 America, and thirty-seven genera represented in the Ameri- 

 can flora do not appear in that of Japan. A few genera, 



* Reiscn in Anurland. t Prim. Ft. Amur. X L. C. 



