52 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 258. 



reach the most northern limit reached in any country by 

 these plants, and one of the most interesting features of 

 the Japanese flora is the presence in Yezo of three large 

 trees in two genera of this tropical and semi-tropical family 

 as far north, at least, as forty-four degrees, while the repre- 

 sentative of a third genus, Schizandra, is found still further 

 north on the Manchurian mainland. In eastern America 

 two species of Magnolia reach nearly as high latitudes as 

 this genus does in Japan, but in the United States Magnolia is 

 really southern, and has only succeeded in maintaining a pre- 

 carious foothold at the north, while in Yezo it is a most 

 important element and a conspicuous feature of the forest- 

 vegetation. Of the eight genera of Magnoliacese repre- 

 sented in Japan, all but two, Schizandra and Kadsura, 

 which are woody climbers, are trees, while in America 

 Magnolia and Liriodendron are the only arborescent 

 genera in the family. 



Of the Japanese trees of the family, Euptelsea polyandra 

 is the least desirable as an ornamental plant, and will 

 probably never be very much cultivated except as a bo- 

 tanical curiosity. It is a small tree twenty to thirty feet in 

 height, with a slender straight trunk covered with smooth 

 pale bark, stout, rigid, chestnut-brown branchlets marked 

 with white spots, and wide-spreading branches, which 

 form an open, rather unsightly, head. The leaves are am- 

 ple and bright green ; they are thin, prominently veined, 

 sometimes five or six inches long and broad, nearly circu- 

 lar in outline, deeply and very irregularly cut on the mar- 

 gins, with a long, broad, apical point, and are borne on 

 long slender petioles. In November they turn a dull yel- 

 low-brown color before falling. The minute flowers ap- 

 pear in early spring before the leaves, and are produced in 

 three or four-flowered clusters from buds formed early in 

 the previous autumn. They have neither sepals nor petals, 

 and consist of a number of slender stamens surrounding 

 the free, clustered carpels. The fruit, which ripens in No- 

 vember, is not more showy than the flowers ; it is a small, 

 stalked samara half an inch long and furnished with an 

 oblique marginal membranaceous wing. The handsomest 

 thing about this tree is the winter-bud, which is obtuse, 

 half an inch long, and covered with imbricated scales, 

 which are bright chestnut-brown and as lustrous as if they 

 had been covered with a coat of varnish. Euptelia poly- 

 andra is found in the mountainous forests of central Japan 

 usually on the banks, or in the neighborhood, of streams 

 between 2,000 and 3,000 feet above the sea-level, but it 

 does not appear to be anywhere very common. It is the 

 type of a small genus represented in the flora of Bombay 

 by a second species.* 



Cercidiphyllum Japonicum, the second of the Japanese 

 trees of the Magnolia family, is the representative of a 

 monotypic endemic genus. It is the most interesting, as 

 it is the largest deciduous tree of the empire, and, more than 

 any other of its inhabitants, gives their peculiar appear- 

 ance and character to the forests of Yezo. Of the botanical 

 characters and relationship of this tree we shall have some- 

 thing to say in a later issue, in connection with a figure of 

 the male and female flowers, for Cercidiphyllum is dioe- 

 cious and produces its minute apetalous precocious stam- 

 inate and pistillate flowers on different individuals. In 

 Yezo, Cercidiphyllum inhabits the slopes of low hills and 

 selects a moist situation and rich deep soil, from which the 

 denseness of the forest and the impenetrable growth of 

 dwarf Bamboo, which covers the forest-floor, effectually 

 check evaporation. In such situations it attains its greatest 

 size, often rising to the height of a hundred feet, and devel- 

 oping a cluster of stems eight or ten feet through. Some- 

 times Cercidiphyllum forms a single trunk three or four feet 

 in diameter and free of branches for fifty feet above the 

 ground ; but more commonly it sends up a number of 

 stems, which are united together for several feet into a stout 

 trunk and then gradually diverge. The trunk of a typical 

 Cercidiphyllum of this form appears in the illustration on 



* By a slip Euptelia was included in the list of the endemic arborescent genera 

 of Japan, printed in the first issue of these notes. 



page 53, of this issue. It is the reproduction of a photo- 

 graph made last summer on the hill near Sapporo alluded 

 to in the first number of these notes, and represents a large, 

 but by no means an exceptionally large, trunk, which, at 

 three feet above the ground, girted twenty-one feet six 

 inches. 



The trunk of Cercidiphyllum is covered with thick pale 

 bark, deeply furrowed and broken into narrow ridges. 

 Similar bark covers the principal branches ; these are very 

 stout and issue from the stem nearly at right angles; 

 gradually drooping, the slender reddish branchlets in 

 which they end are often decidedly pendulous. The upper 

 branches and branchlets are erect, the whole skeleton of 

 the tree showing even in summer through the sparse, 

 small, nearly circular leaves which are placed remotely on 

 the branches ; in the autumn they turn clear bright yellow. 

 In port and in the general appearance of its foliage, Cer- 

 cidiphyllum, as it appears in the forests of Yezo, might, at 

 first sight, be mistaken for a venerable Ginkgo-tree, which, in 

 old age, has the same habit, with pendulous branches below 

 and erect branches above ; but the trunk and its cover- 

 ing are very different in the two trees. 



Cercidiphyllum is distributed from central Yezo south- 

 ward nearly through the entire length of the Japanese 

 islands. At the north it grows at the sea-level and is very 

 common, but on the main island it is confined to high 

 elevations and is rather rare. Except in Yezo, it sel- 

 dom grows more than twenty or thirty feet high, and I 

 never saw it, except in that island, below 5,000 feet ele- 

 vation, where, as at Yumoto, in the Nikko Mountains, it is 

 scattered through the lower borders of the Hemlock- 

 forest. 



Cercidiphyllum is a valuable timber-tree, producing soft 

 straight-grained light yellow wood, which resembles the 

 wood of Liriodendron, although rather lighter and softer 

 and probably inferior in quality. It is very straight-grained 

 and easily worked, and in Yezo is a favorite material for 

 the interior finish of cheap houses and for cases, packing- 

 boxes, etc. From its great trunks the Ainos hollowed their 

 canoes, and it is from this wood that they make the 

 mortars found in every Aino house and used in pounding 

 grain. 



Seeds of Cercidiphyllum were sent to the Arnold Arbo- 

 retum from Sapporo fifteen years ago, and there are now 

 plants in the neighborhood of Boston nearly twenty feet 

 high raised from these seeds. In New England Cercidi- 

 phyllum is very hardy and grows rapidly ; in its young 

 state it is nearly as fastigiate in habit as a Lombardy Pop- 

 lar, the trunk being covered from the ground with slender 

 upright branches which shade it from the sun, which seems 

 injurious to this tree, at least while young. As an orna- 

 mental plant, Cercidiphyllum is only valuable for its pecu- 

 liar Cercis-like leaves, which, when they unfold in early 

 spring, are bright red, and for its peculiar habit, as the 

 flowers and fruit are neither conspicuous nor beautiful. 



c. s. s. 



Foreign Correspondence. 



The New Plants of 1892. — 11. 



Stove Plants. — There were no very remarkable plants 

 among the new introductions from the tropics last year. 

 Aglaonema costatum (Veitch) is a dwarf ornamental-leaved 

 plant, green, spotted and veined with white, the leaves 

 ovate, about flve inches long ; native of Perak. Alocasia 

 Rex and A. nobilis (Sander & Co.) are promising additions 

 to the many kinds of Alocasia in cultivation. Begonia de- 

 cora (Veitch) is a prettily variegated little plant which is 

 certain to become a favorite with those who are interested 

 in the ornamental-leaved Begonias. Dracaena Sanderiana 

 (Sander & Co.) is an elegant plant in the way of D. reflexa, 

 with the leaves prettily lined with white on a green ground. 

 Maranta Sanderiana and M. Mooreana (Sander & Co.) 

 are distinct-looking additions to Calatheas, of which we 



