February 15, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest 



75 



andCaladium esculentum in tliegroundaredoingl havenotex- 

 amined. Many are doubtless killed, for the soil has been 

 deeply frozen. The severe weather will add much more to 

 our knowledge of the capacity of plants to resist cold, but our 

 losses will doubtless be heavy. In the mountains the weather 

 was Canadian. 

 Raleigh, N. C. ^- F. Massey. 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan. — V. 



AMONG the Magnolias of Japan there is no evergreen 

 species which resembles the great evergreen Magno- 

 lia of our southern states or at all equals it in the beauty 

 of flowers and foliage ; and the nearest approach to an 

 evergreen Magnolia in the empire of the Mikado is the 

 representative of a closely allied genus, Michelia, which 

 differs from Magnolia in the position of the flowers, which 

 instead of being terminal on the branches are, except in 

 the case of one Indian species, axillary ; and in the num- 

 ber of ovules and seeds, which are two in each carpel of 

 Magnolia and more than two in each carpel of Michelia. 



Michelias, of which a dozen species are knqvvn, inhabit 

 southern and south-western Asia, including the islands of 

 the Indian Archipelago, and, with the exception of the 

 Chinese Michelia fuscata (or as it is habitually called in 

 the southern states. Magnolia), which is cultivated for its 

 exceedingly fragrant small flowers in all warm temperate 

 countries, the genus is not seen in American or European 

 gardens. 



The Japanese species, Michelia compressa,* as it appears 

 in the Botanic Garden of the University of Tokyo, is a tree 

 thirty to forty feet in height, with a trunk twelve to 

 eighteen inches in diameter, covered with smooth dark 

 bark, and rather slender branches which form a compact 

 handsome round-topped head. The winter-buds and the 

 branchlets during their first year are clothed with soft fer- 

 rugineous or pale hairs ; in their second season the branch- 

 lets are slender, light or dark brown, marked especially 

 near their extremities with large pale lenticles, and con- 

 spicuous from the raised nearly circular leaf-scars. The 

 leaves are oblong or narrowly obovate, gradually con- 

 tracted into long slender petioles, and are rounded or 

 short-pointed at the apex, entire, coriaceous, conspicuously 

 reticulate-veined, dark green and lustrous on the upper and 

 pale "and opaque on the lower surface ; they are three or 

 four inches long, an inch to an inch and a half broad, with 

 petioles an inch in length, and fall when a year old after 

 the appearance of the new shoots. The flowers, which 

 are very fragrant, are from an inch to an inch and a 

 quarter across when expanded, with pale yellow, narrow, 

 obovate sepals and petals, nearly sessile anthers, and a 

 stipitate head of pistils, the ovaries, according to Maxi- 

 mowicz, each containing five or six ovules. The cone of 

 fruit is two inches long and is raised on a stalk half an 

 inch or more in length ; the rusty brown thick-walled car- 

 pels, which are marked with large pale circular dots, 

 usually containing three seeds ; these are broadly ovate 

 and much flattened by mutual pressure. 



Michelia compressa is the most boreal species of its 

 genus ; it was discovered near Nagasaki by Maximowicz, 

 who saw a single tree. Oldham, an English botanist, col- 

 lected it near the base of Fugi-san, doubtless from a culti- 

 vated tree, and it is said to be found in several places in 

 the extreme southern part of the empire, although I have 

 never seen it except in the Botanic Garden of Tokyo, where 

 there are several large trees from which were collected the 

 specimens figured in our illustration on page 77, from a 

 drawing made by Mr. Faxon. It is not improbable that 

 Michelia is at the northern limit of its range in Japan and 

 that it will be found to be more at home on the Loochoo 

 Islands or on Formosa when the interesting flora of these 

 islands is carefully explored. 



The fact that Michelia compressa flourishes in Tokyo, 

 where our southern evergreen Magnolia hardly survives, 



* Magnoli.T (Michelia) compressa, Maximowicz, M<'l. Bio!., viii., 506. Franchel& 

 Savatier, Enum, PI. Jap., i., 15. 



indicates that it may perhaps be grown as far north as 

 Washington and, possibly, Philadelphia, in southern Eng- 

 land and Ireland and on the west coast of France, that is, 

 in regions where no other species of Michelia can exist in 

 the open ground and where broad-leaved evergreen trees 

 are rare and much desired. 



In Japan, representatives of two other arborescent gen- 

 era of Magnolia, Trocodendron and Illicium occur. The 

 former is endemic, monotypic, and, like Cercidiphyllum 

 and Euptelia, produces flowers without sepals and petals. 

 Trocodendron aralioides is a small, handsome, glabrous 

 evergreen tree with alternate broadly rhomboidal crenulate, 

 penni-veined leaves four or five inches long, borne on long 

 stout petioles and clustered at the extremities of the 

 branches. The flowers are produced in short terminal 

 racemes and consist of numerous anthers raised on slender 

 filaments and surrounding the carpels, which are connate 

 in a vertical series and which ripen into a small fleshy 

 fruit crowned by the remnants of the persistent styles. It 

 is a tree fifteen to twenty feet in height and is said to be 

 very common in some parts of the country, although I 

 never saw it growing wild, and it is certainly not an inhab- 

 itant of alpine forests or of Hokkaido, as is stated in some 

 works on the Japanese flora, although, perhaps, it occurs 

 north in Hondo, at the sea-level, as it is hardy in the 

 gardens of Nikko, at an elevation of 2,000 feet above the 

 ocean. Trocodendron aralioides is not infrequently culti- 

 vated by the Japanese, and fine specimens of it are found 

 scattered through public and private gardens in Tokyo and 

 Yokohama. 



The Japanese Illicium is a more beautiful and interesting 

 plant. It is the representative of a genus with two species 

 in our southern states and half a dozen others in India and 

 southern China, one of which, Illicium verum, supplies the 

 star anise of the pharmacists. Illicium anisatum. or as it 

 should, perhaps, be called, Illicium religiosum, is a beautiful 

 small evergreen tree, fifteen or twenty feet high, with bril- 

 liant persistent leaves and small fragrant yellow flowers, and 

 one of the sacred plants of Japan. Siebold considered it a 

 native of China or Corea and an introduction by Buddhist 

 priests into Japan. This may be the correct view, although 

 Japanese botanists now believe it to be a native of the 

 southern part of the empire, where Rein found it, as he 

 supposed, growing wild. Sacred to Buddha, it is always 

 planted in the neighborhood of his temples and is common 

 in private gardens as far north as the thirty-fifth degree of 

 latitude. The branches of this tree, especially when it is 

 in flower, are used to decorate the altars in the temples, or 

 in cemeteries serve to mark the respect of the living for the 

 dead. From the powdered bark, mixed with resin, are 

 prepared the "smoke candles " with which incense is made 

 in the temples, and with which the "moxa'' is burned on 

 the human body as a sovereign cure for many of its ills. 



The remaining Japanese plants of the Magnolia family, 

 Katsura and Schizandra, are woody climbers. Katsura 

 Japonica is the type of a genus consisting of seven or eight 

 species, all natives of southern and western Asia, and its 

 most northern member growing spontaneously in the south- 

 ern islands and at the sea-level in Hondo as far north as 

 the thirty-fifth degree of latitude. The flowers are not 

 showy, but it is a plant of extraordinary beauty in the 

 autumn when the clusters of scarlet fruit are ripe, their 

 brilliancy being heightened by contrast with the dark green 

 lustrous persistent leaves. There is a fine specimen of 

 this plant in the garden attached to the Agricultural College 

 at Tokyo, but I have never seen it in any other, although 

 it might well be grown wherever the climate is sufficiently 

 mild, as in the autumn no plant is more beautiful. 



Schizandra is familiar to American botanists as one 

 species ; the type of the genus, Schizandra coccinea, in- 

 habits our southern states ; in Japan two species occur, 

 and one of these, Schizandra Chinensis, which grows also 

 in Manchuria, carries the Magnolia family further north 

 than any of its other meinbers. It is a vigorous plant, with 

 long twining stems and small, unisexual, white flowers, 



