38 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 257. 



habits of observation and a knowledge of principles which 

 would make life more interesting to any one, even if he 

 never owned a garden or was the proprietor of a rood of 

 land. If a competent and sympathetic teacher should do 

 no more than devote a portion of a day each week to the 

 work of familiarizing children with plant-life and its essen- 

 tial conditions, with the help of living illustrations which 

 could be found by the way-side, or in an experimental 

 garden-bed a rod square on the school-grounds, or even 

 from a dozen window-plants in winter, the young people 

 would find this the most delightful part of their course of 

 study, and they would acquire knowledge and habits of 

 thought that would be invaluable all through their lives. 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan. — 11. 



TRAVELERS in Japan have often insisted on the 

 resemblance between that country and eastern 

 America in the general features of vegetation. But with 

 the exception of Yezo, which is still mostly uninhabited 

 and in a state of nature, and those portions of the other 

 islands which are above 3,000 feet over the level of the 

 ocean, it is difficult to form a sufficiently accurate idea of 

 the general appearance of the original forest-covering of 

 Japan to be able to compare the aspects of its vegetation with 

 thoseof any other country, for every foot of the lowlands and 

 the mountain valleys of the three southern islands have been 

 cultivated for centuries. And the foot-hills and low moun- 

 tains which were once clothed with forests, and might be 

 again, are now covered with coarse herbage (principally 

 Eulalia) and are destitute of trees, except such as have 

 sprung up in sheltered ravines and have succeeded in 

 escaping the fires which are set every year to burn off the 

 dry grasses. Remoteness, bad roads, and the impossibility 

 of bringing down their timber into the valleys have saved 

 the mountain forests of Japan, and these may still be seen, 

 especially between 5,000 and 8,000 feet over the level of the 

 sea, in their natural condition. But these elevated forests are 

 composed of comparatively few species, and if it were not 

 for the plantations of Cdnifers, which the Japanese for 

 at least twelve centuries, it is said, have been making 

 to supply their workers in wood with material, and 

 for the trees preserved or planted in the temple grounds in 

 the neighborhood of towns, it would be impossible to ob- 

 tain any idea at all of many of the Japanese trees. But, 

 fortunately, the priests of Buddha have planted and re- 

 planted trees for a thousand years about their temples, 

 which are often surrounded by what now appear to be nat- 

 ural woods, as no tree is ever cut and no attempt is made 

 to clear up the undergrowth. These groves are sometimes 

 of considerable extent and contain noble trees, Japanese 

 and Chinese, which give some idea of what the inhabitants 

 of the forests of Japan were before the land was cleared 

 for agriculture. 



The floras of Japan and eastern America have, it is true, 

 some curious features in common, and the presence in the 

 two regions of certain types not found elsewhere, show 

 their relationship. But such plants are usually small, 

 and for the most part rare or confined to the high 

 mountains. Diphylleia, Buckleya, Epigaea and Shortia 

 show the common origin of the two floras ; but these are 

 rare plants in Japan as they are in America, with the ex- 

 ception of Epigaea, and probably not one traveler in ten 

 thousand has ever seen them, while the chief elements of 

 the forest flora of northern Japan, the only part of the 

 empire where, as has already been said, comparison is 

 possible — those which all travelers notice — do not recall 

 America so much, perhaps, as they do Siberia and Europe. 



The broad-leaved Black Oaks, which form the most dis- 

 tinct and conspicuous feature in all the forests of eastern 

 America, are entirely absent from Japan, and the decidu- 

 ous-leaved White Oaks, which, in Japan, form a large part 

 of the forest-growth of the north, are of the European and not 

 of the American type, with the exception of Quercus den- 

 tata, which has no related species in America, The Chest- 



nut Oaks, which are common and conspicuous, both in the 

 northern and southern parts of eastern America, do not 

 occur in Japan, and the Evergreen Oaks, which abound in 

 the southern part of that empire, where they are more com- 

 mon than any other group of trees, are Asiatic and not 

 American in their relationships. 



Many of our most familiar American trees are absent from 

 the forests of Japan. The Tulip-tree, the Pawpaw or Asimina, 

 the Ptelea or Hop-tree, the Loblolly Bay or Gordonia, the 

 Cyrilla and the Cliftonia, the Plum-trees, which abound 

 here in many forms, the Texas Buckeye (Ungnadia), the 

 Mesquit, the Locusts, the Cladrastis or Virgilia, the 

 Kentucky Coffee-tree or Gymnocladus, the Liquidam- 

 bar, the Tupelos, the Sourwood or Oxydendron, the 

 Osage Orange, the Kalmia, the Sassafras, the Persea or 

 Red Bay, the Planera or Water Elm, the Plane Tree, the 

 Black Walnut, the Hickories and the deciduous Cypress — 

 all common and conspicuous in our forests — are not found 

 in Japan. Crataegus, with a dozen species, is one of the 

 features of the forest flora of eastern America, while in 

 Japan the genus is represented by a single species, confined 

 to the northern part of the empire, and nowhere very com- 

 mon. The Japanese Maples, with the exception of Acer 

 pictum, which is not unlike our Sugar Maple, have no close 

 resemblance or relationship with the American species ; 

 the Beech and the Chestnut are European, and not Ameri- 

 can ; the Birches, with one exception, are of the Old World 

 type, as are the Lindens, Ashes, Willows, the Celtis, the 

 Alders, Poplars and Larches.* 



On the other hand, the Japanese miss in our forests 

 Euptelia, Cercidophyllum and Trochodendron, all of the 

 Magnolia family, Idesia, the arborescent Ternstroemiaceae 

 (Ternstroemia, Cleyera, Eurya and Camellia), Phelloden- 

 dron and Hovenia, Euscaphis, Mackia and Albizzya, Disty- 

 Hum, Acanthopanax, Syringa, many arborescent Lauriniae 

 (Cinnamomum, Machilus, Actinodaphne, Litsea), M'hich, 

 next to the Evergreen Oaks, are the most salient features of 

 the forest flora of southern Japan. He will miss, too, the 

 beautiful arborescent Linderas which abound in Japan, 

 while in America the genus is only represented by two un- 

 important shrubs, the arborescent Euphorbiaceae, like 

 Buxus, Daphniphyllum, Aleurites, Maliotus, Exccecaria, 

 Zelkova, Aphananthe, Broussonetia and Debregeasia, or 

 find anything to remind him of Pterocarya and Platycarya, 

 of Cryptomeria, Cephalotaxus and Sciadopitys. 



The forests of the two regions possess in common Mag- 

 nolia and ^sculus, which are more abundant in species 

 and individuals in America than in Japan. The Rhuses, or 

 Sumachs, are very similar in the two regions, and so are 

 the Witch-hazel and the arborescent Aralia. Cornus macro- 

 phylla of Japan is only an enlarged Cornus alternifolia of 

 eastern America, and the so-called Flowering Dogwoods 

 of the two countries are very much alike. The Japanese 

 Walnut is very like the American Butternut, while, rather 

 curiously, the Japanese Thuya and the two Chamaecy- 

 paris, the Piceas and Abies, resemble species of Pacific 

 North America, a region whose flora has little affinity 

 with that of eastern Asia. Torreya is common to the 

 two regions ; in America it is one of the most local of 

 all our trees, while in Japan it is abundant in the moun- 

 tainous regions of the central and southern parts of the 

 empire. 



Apart from the characters which distinguish related 

 genera and specie's of Japanese trees from their American 

 congeners there are many aspects of vegetation which 

 make the two countries unlike. The number of broad- 

 leaved evergreen trees is much greater in southern Japan 

 than it is in the southern United States, there being iifty 

 species of these trees in the former, and only twenty in 

 eastern America (exclusive always of southern Florida), 

 and the general aspect of the groves and woods at the sea- 

 level, even in the latitude of Tokyo, is of broad-leaved 



* Of the arborescent genera of Japan thirty are represented in Europe, and all, 

 with the exception of Buxus, are also found in eastern America. 



