154 



Garden and Forest. 



[NuiytfifiR 267. 



deeply cut on the margins. On Mount Hakkoda, in north- 

 ern Hondo, where Acer capillipes is extremely abundant 

 at 2,000 to 3,000 feet elevation above the sea, we found it in 

 October, growing as a stout bush or bushy tree, twelve or 

 fifteen feet in height, with delicate canary-yellow leaves, 

 and secured a supply of ripe seeds. 



In Yezo, Acer Japonicum and Acer palmatum are both 

 common ; these species, next after Acer pictum, are the 

 most generally distributed Maples in Japan, and the only 

 Maples which the Japanese cultivate at all commonly. 

 They are both small trees, rarely, if ever, exceeding a 

 height of fifty feet, and both, as is well known, varying 

 remarkably in the size, form and cutting of their leaves. 

 A few of the varieties of Acer palmatum, particularly the 

 one on which the leaves are divided into narrow lobes 

 and the one with pendulous branches, are favorites in 

 Japan, where few of the numerous and monstrous forms of 

 this tree, with which we have become familiarof late years 

 in this country, are seen outside of nursery-gardens with a 

 foreign trade and connections. Of these two frees the 

 autumn fohage of Acer Japonicum appears the more bril- 

 liant ; and some isolated trees of this species which we saw 

 in October, high up on Mount Hakkoda, were as beautiful 

 in color as a good American Scarlet Maple. These two 

 Maples have not proved very satisfactory in this country, 

 where they have a way of dying in summer without 

 apparent cause. This is due, perhaps, to the fact that 

 nearly all the plants brought here have been raised from 

 degenerate nursery-stock, obtained in or near the treaty 

 ports; and it will be interesting to watch the behavior here 

 of plants raised from seed gathered in the forests of Yezo. 

 For us these Maples have the advantage of retaining their 

 leaves later in the autumn than our species, which are bare 

 of foliage before the Japanese trees assume their brilliant 

 colors; and this is true of many other Japanese and Chi- 

 nese plants, like Ampelopsis Veitchii and Spiraea Thun- 

 bergii, for the autumn in eastern Asia is fully a month 

 later than it is in this country. 



Acer carpinifolium, which is occasionally seen in our 

 gardens, is evidently extremely rare in Japan. There are 

 a few plants in one of the temple-gardens in Nikko, and I 

 saw a single wild specimen hanging over the bank of a 

 stream in the mountains above Fukushima, on the Naga- 

 sendo, and was fortunate in obtaining from it a good sup- 

 ply of seeds. In Nikko, Acer carpinifolium is a handsome 

 round-topped tree, perhaps thirty feet tall. It is well worth 

 growing for its beauty as well as for the unusual form of 

 the leaves, which resemble those of the Hornbeam, for 

 which, at first sight, it might well be mistaken. 



Acer Tschonoskii is common near the margins of Lake 

 Chuzenji in the Nikko mountains, and a thousand feet 

 higher is found as a common shrub in the Hemlock-forests 

 which cover the slopes rising from Lake Umoto. It is a 

 small bushy tree, perhaps twenty feet tall, with bright red 

 twigs and ample leaves, not unlike those of Acer capil- 

 lipes in shape and cutting, although in autumn they turn 

 deep scarlet. We could not find a single seed of this pretty 

 plant, which has probably never been cultivated. Acer 

 rufinerve, hardly distinguishable from the Moosewood of 

 our northern forests (Acer Pennsylvanicum), and Acer cra- 

 taegifoHum, both familiar now in our gardens, are rather 

 common, especially the latter, in all the mountain regions 

 of central Japan, and need no mention here. 



Among the rarer and less-known species we found Acer 

 diabolicum rather common in the neighborhood of Nikko, 

 where it is a round-topped tree twenty to thirty feet tall, 

 very like the European Sycamore Maple in habit and gen- 

 eral appearance, with dull yellow-green leaves four or five 

 inches across, which apparently do not change color before 

 falling, and large dirty brown fruit covered on the nutlets 

 with fine stinging hairs. This seemed the least beautiful 

 of the Maples which we encountered in the forests of 

 Japan. Acer distylum I only saw in the Botanic Garden 

 in Tokyo, and Acer pycnanthum, A. purperascens, A. argu- 

 tum, A. parvifolium, and A. Sieboldianum, the last, prob- 



ably, only a pubescent-leaved variety of Acer Japonicum, 

 I looked for in vain. 



Of Maples of the section Negundo, with the male and 

 female flowers on separate plants and pinnate or ternate 

 leaves, there are two species in Japan — Acer cissifolium 

 and Acer Nikoense. The first is said to be common, and 

 widely distributed from southern Yezo through the moun- 

 tain ranges of the main island, but I only saw a few small 

 plants in hedge-rows near Nikko, none of them half the 

 size of specimens which may be seen in some Massa- 

 chusetts gardens, where Acer cissifolium is a handsome, 

 compact, round-headed little tree with slender, graceful 

 leaves, delicate green in summer and orange and red in late 

 autumn, and where it is one of the most distinct and satisfac- 

 tory of thejapanese trees which have been tried in our climate. 



The second Japanese Negundo, as it appears in the 

 forests of Japan, is a distinct and beautiful tree, which, if it 

 thrives in this country, will be a real addition to our plan- 

 tations. Acer Nikoense, of which a figure appears on 

 page 155 of this issue, grows to a height of forty or, per- 

 haps, fifty feet, with a trunk twelve to eighteen inches in 

 diameter covered with smooth, dark, shghtly furrowed bark, 

 and stout, rather slender branches which form a narrow 

 round-topped head. The branchlets are thick and rigid, 

 and are coated at first, like the inner scales of the ovate- 

 acute winter-buds, the young leaf-stalks, the under surface 

 of the young leaflets, the peduncles and pedicels, with short, 

 thick, pale or rufous, villous tomentum ; at the end of their 

 first season the branchlets are dark red-brown and marked 

 with numerous minute lenticular dots. The leaves are ter- 

 nate, with stout rigid petioles an inch or an inch and a half 

 in length, and ovate or obovate acute, long-pointed, entire, 

 or remotely and irregularly coarsely crenate leaflets, the 

 terminal leaflet long-stalked, symmetrical and wedge- 

 shaped at the base, the lateral leaflets rounded on the 

 lower, and oblique on the upper edge at the base, and 

 sessile or nearly so. The leaflets are thick and rather rigid, 

 two and a half to five inches long, an inch and a half to two 

 inches broad, conspicuously reticulated, dark yellow-green 

 on the upper surface, pale and coated on the lower surface 

 with pubescence, which is rufous on the stout midribs and 

 broad straight veins, or sometimes bright green on the 

 lower surface and glabrous, except on the midribs and veins. 

 In the autumn the leaflets turn brilliant scarlet on the upper 

 surface, but remain pale on the lower. The flowers are 

 yellow, half an inch across, nodding, and are borne in short, 

 few, usually three-flowered, subsessile, terminal corymbs 

 on slender, graceful pedicels. The sepals and petals are 

 ovate or obovate, rounded at the apex and contracted at the 

 base into narrow claws ; in the sterile flower, in which the 

 ovary is reduced to a minute rudiment, the stamens, which 

 are inserted between the lobes of the conspicuous disk, are 

 exserted ; the filaments are filiform and the anthers are 

 large and oblong ; in the fertile flower the stamens are ru- 

 dimentary, and not longer than the ovary, which is coated 

 with thick pale tomentum and crowned with a long stout 

 style with revolute stigmas. The fruit is three inches long, 

 with remarkably thick and hard-walled puberulous nutlets 

 and broad, falcate, diverging or converging obovate wings, 

 rounded at the apex. 



Acer Nikoense is not a common, although a widely dis- 

 tributed, species. I saw a number of plants in the temple- 

 grounds of Nikko and on the road between Nikko and Lake 

 Chuzenji, a single tree near Agamatsu, on the Nagasendo, 

 and ten or twelve more on the Yusui-toge above Yokokawa. 

 According to Maximowicz,* who distinguished this tree 

 nearly thirty years ago, it grows as far south as Nagaski. 

 Acer Nikoense is practically unknown in gardens, although 

 a single small plant was sent from Japan two years ago to 

 the Rixdorf Nurseries in Berlin, and a figure of a leaf taken 

 from this specimen was published in the Garienflora last 

 summer (page 149). 



* MH. Biol., vi., 370 ; x., 609 ; Bull. Acad, St. Peteysiourg, t. 76 -Franchet & Sava- 



tier, Enum. Pl.Jap., i.,go. — Pax, Bngler's Bot.yakrb., vi., 205.; Garfenfiora, 7i.\i., 149. 

 Acer Maximowiczianum, Miquel, Arch. Nier., ii., 473, 478. 



