JUNE 14, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest 



253 



killed if the sun reaches the seedlings tlie first year, and they 

 damp off if in too deep shade. I noticed this especially in 

 East Tennessee and in North Carolina, where I had abundant 

 time and could see the advantage the Old-field Pine had with 

 its coarse foliage. 



While passing through a forest of Pinus Lambertiana, the 

 large Sugar Pine, I noticed that the seedlings and young trees 

 were remarkably scarce, while seedlings of other species, not 

 devoured by birds, were creeping in around the edges in vast 

 numbers. The old trees were bearing, in quantity, huge cones, 

 ten to fifteen inches long and twelve inches in circumference. 

 Squirrels, wild pigeons and Clark's crow were feeding on the 

 seeds. The cones hang from the utmost point of the upper 

 branches, bending the limb with their weight. The large 

 squirrels go from branch to branch, cutting off the cones, anil 

 then gather them together to be broken up at the base of the 

 trees, and leave, in many instances, a bushel of cut-up cones 

 at the base of the tree without a single seed that I could find. 



In my rambles through the Redwoods I noticed the great 

 scarcity of seedlings ; indeed, I never found ten seedlings in a 

 six hours' ramble, except where there had been new cutting 

 and filling on a narrow-gauge railway. Examining the seeds 

 carefully, I found ninety-eight per cent, abortive, but this tree 

 has an advantage over all other conifers, in throwing up a 

 circle of young treesaround the base of each cut-down tree, and 

 is therefore better prepared to hold its own than any other con- 

 ifer with which I am acquainted. When we reached the groups 

 of Brewer Spruce, Picea Breweriana, the scarcity of seedlings 

 and small trees was remarkable, but the next morning fully 

 explained the cause. Squirrels were busily employed cutting 

 off the cones. Grossbeaks and crossbills were tearing the 

 cones, and the little snowbirds that are so troublesome on 

 our evergreen seed-beds vv^ere picking up the scattering 

 seeds. Now, since all of these trees known to exist do not num- 

 ber over one hundred, in what other way can we account for 

 the scarcity .'' 



Yes ! on the five-hundredth year of the discovery of this con- 

 tinent there will be choice evergreens in America, but, like 

 the buffalo, the elk and the antelope, they will be confined to 

 public parks and private grounds. 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan. — XV. 



CORNUS, which is exceedingly common in North 

 America, where sixteen or seventeen species are 

 distinguished, is less abundant in Japan than in the other 

 great natural botanical divisions of the northern hemi- 

 sphere. In the northern regions of eastern America differ- 

 ent species of Cornus often form a considerable part of the 

 shrubby undergrowth which borders the margins of the 

 forest or lines the banks of streams, lakes and swamps. In 

 Japan these shrubby species, or their prototypes, do not 

 exist. High up among the Nikko Mountains, on rocks 

 under the dense shade of Hemlocks, we saw a few dwarf 

 sprawling plants of the Siberian and north China Cornus 

 alba, but did not encounter in any other part of the empire 

 a shrubby Cornel. High up on these mountains, too, the 

 ground is carpeted with the little Bunch-berry, the Cornus 

 Canadensis of our own northern woods, which is also com- 

 mon in some parts of Yezo and on the Kurile Islands, 

 where a second herbaceous Cornel, with large white floral 

 scales, Cornus Suecica, is found. This is a common plant, 

 too, in all the boreal regions of North America from New- 

 foundland and Labrador to Alaska, and in northern Europe 

 and continental Asia. Of arborescent Cornels the flora of 

 Japan possesses only two species, Cornus Kousa and Cor- 

 nus macrophylla, and neither of these is endemic to the 

 empire. 



Cornus Kousa represents in Japan the Cornus florida of 

 eastern America and the C. Nuttallii of the Pacific states. 

 From these trees it differs, however, in one particular ; in 

 our American Flowering Dogwoods, the fruits, which are 

 gathered into close heads, are individually distinct, while 

 in the Japan tree and in an Indian species they are united 

 together into a fleshy strawberry-shaped mass, technically 

 called a syncarp. Owing to this peculiarity of the fruit, 

 botanists at one time considered these Asiatic trees ge- 

 nerically distinct from the American Flowering Dogwoods, 

 and placed them in the genus Benthamia, which has since 

 been united with Cornus. In Japan, Cornus Kousa is ap- 



parently not common ; certainly it is not such a feature of 

 the vegetation in any part of the empire which we visited 

 as Cornus florida is in our middle and southern states. In- 

 deed, we only saw it in one place among the Hakone Moun- 

 tains, and on the road between Nikko and Lake Chuzenji, 

 where it was a bushy flat-topped tree not more than 

 eighteen or twenty feet high, with wide-spreading branches. 

 The leaves are smaller and narrower than those of our 

 eastern American Flowering Dogwood; the involucral 

 scales are acute and creamy white, and the heads of 

 flowers are borne on longer and much more slender pe- 

 duncles. Cornus Kousa also inhabits central China ; it 

 was introduced into our gardens several years ago, and it 

 now flowers every year in the neighborhood of New York, 

 where it was first cultivated in the Parsons' Nursery at 

 Flushing. As an ornamental plant it is certainly inferior 

 in every way to our native Flowering Dogwood, and in 

 this country at least it will probably never be much grown 

 except as a botanical curiosity. 



The second arborescent Japanese Cornel, Cornus macro- 

 phylla, often known by its synonym, Cornus brachypoda, 

 is also an inhabitant of the Himalayan forests, where it is 

 common between 4,000 and 8,000 feet above the sea-level, 

 and of China and Corea. It is one of the most beautiful of 

 the Cornels, and in size and habit the stateliest and most 

 imposing member of 'the genus. In Japan, trees fifty or 

 sixty feet in height, with stout well-developed trunks more 

 than a foot in diameter, are not uncommon, and when such 

 specimens rise above the thick undergrowth of shrubs 

 which in the mountain-regions of central Japan often cover 

 the steep slopes which descend to the streams, they are 

 splendid objects, with their long branches standing at right 

 angles with the stems, and forming distinct flat tiers of 

 foliage, for the leaves, like those of our American Cornus 

 alternifolia, are crowded at the ends of short lateral branch- 

 lets which grow nearly upright on the older branches, so 

 that in looking down on one of these trees only the upper 

 surface of the leaves is seen. These are five to eight inches 

 long and three or four inches wide, dark green on the upper 

 surface, but very pale, and sometimes nearly white, on the 

 lower surface. The flowers and fruit resemble those of 

 Cornus alternifolia, although they are produced in wider 

 and more openly branched clusters ; and, like those of this 

 American species, they are borne on the ends of the 

 lateral branchlets, and, rising above the foliage, stud the 

 upper side of the broad whorls of green. 



Cornus macrophylla is exceedingly common in all the 

 mountain-regions of Hondo, where it sometimes ascends 

 to 4,000 feet above the sea, and in Yezo, where it is scat- 

 tered through forests of deciduous trees, usually selecting 

 situations where its roots can obtain an abundant supply of 

 moisture. This fine tree was introduced into the United 

 States many years ago through the Parsons' Nursery, but I 

 believe has never flourished here. In the Arnold Arbore- 

 tum, where numerous attempts to cultivate it have been 

 made, it has never lived more than a few years at a time. 

 Raised from seed produced in the severe climate of Yezo, 

 Cornus macrophylla may, hovi'ever, succeed in New Eng- 

 land, where, if it grows as it does in Japan, it should prove 

 a good tree to associate with our native plants. 



Cornus officinalis, as it was first described from plants 

 found in Japanese gardens, has usually been considered a 

 native of that country. But, although it has been cultivated 

 in Japan for many centuries on account of its supposed 

 medical virtues, it is probably Corean. It may best be con- 

 sidered, perhaps, a mere variety of the European and 

 Asiatic Cornelian Cherry, Cornus J\Ias, from which the 

 Corean tree is best distinguished by the tufts of rusty 

 brown hairs which occupy the axils of the veins on the 

 lower surface of the leaves. In the botanic garden in 

 Tokyo, which includes the site of a physic-garden estab- 

 lished in the early days of the Tokugawa dynasty, there 

 is a group of trees of Cornus officinalis, which appear to 

 have attained a great age ; they are bushy plants, perhaps 

 thirty feet tall, with bent and twisted half-decayed trunks 



