442 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 296. 



ting, should be disseminated in every possible way both 

 by precept and example. 



Last year we advocated the establishment of one or two 

 great forest-reservations in this section where the trees had 

 escaped the axe of the logger, so that future generations 

 might see what manner of timber once grew here. Such 

 reservations would have immediate value as an object-les- 

 son, and the attention they excited might wake up 

 the natives to an appreciation of the worth of the inher- 

 itance they were squandering. Again, if the experi- 

 ment stations of the states in which these forests are sit- 

 uated should all take it upon themselves to investigate the 

 best means of preventing the washing-out of soil by moun- 

 tain torrents, and to explain to the people the part that 

 areas of forest-land on the hills play in the protection of 

 the slopes and plains, they would also teach lessons which 

 could be utilized in immediate practice. Large tracts of 

 this timber are passing into the hands of companies and 

 individual capitalists of the north. Where these are bought 

 for the timber alone, there will be danger that the rights of 

 the people on the lower slopes will not be thought of, and 

 that the wood will be taken for its immediate cash returns, 

 but those who have bought this for a long investment, and 

 the companies who have purchased tracts as parks or game- 

 preserves, will render the state and the country good ser- 

 vice if they secure expert advice in regard to the forest, if 

 they show a genuine respect for trees and a desire to save 

 them, and if they set forth in every possible way the truth 

 that in a poverty-stricken country like this the -waste of the 

 forest is a criminal extravagance. 



Notes on the Forest Flora of Japan. — XXIII. 



IN cone-bearing plants Japan is somewhat richer than 

 eastern America. All of our genera, with the exception 

 of Taxodium, the Bald Cypress of the southern states, are 

 represented in the empire, where two endemic genera occur, 

 Cryptomeria and Sciadopytis, and where Cephalotaxus and, 

 perhaps, Cupressus have representatives. In cone-bearing 

 species, too, owing to the greater multiplication of forms of 

 Abies, Japan is richer than eastern America, where we have 

 only two indigenous Firs. The genus Pmus, which furnishes 

 a very considerable part of the forest-growth on the Atlantic 

 sea-coast, and which is represented here by thirteen spe- 

 cies, has only five in Japan ; and of these two are small 

 trees of high altitudes, and one is an alpine shrub. Japan 

 is richer than eastern America in Spruces, of which we have 

 only two, in Chamaecyparis and in Juniperus. The two 

 floras each contain a single Thuya, a Taxus, a Torreya, two 

 Hemlocks and a Larch. In Japan, Conifers are more planted 

 for shade and ornament than they are in America, or, per- 

 haps, in any other country, although, except above 5,000 

 feet in Hondo, where there are continuous forests of Hem- 

 lock, they form a small part of the composition of indige- 

 nous forest-growth ; and forests of Pines, Spruces or Firs, 

 such striking features in many parts of this country, do not 

 occur, except, perhaps, in northern Hokkaido, which we 

 did not visit, and where there are said to be great forests of 

 Abies Sachalinensis. 



The Japanese Arbor-vitae, Thuya Japonica, which is 

 sometimes found in our plantations under the name of 

 Thuyopsis Standishii, and which is more like the species of 

 the north-west coast (Thuya gigantea) than our eastern 

 Arbor-vitae or Yellow Cedar, appears to be a rare tree in 

 Japan, and we only saw a few solitary individuals on the 

 shores of Lake Chuzenji and of Lake Umoto, in the Nikko 

 Mountains. Here it was a formal pyramidal tree twenty 

 or thirty feet high, with pale green foliage and bright red 

 bark. 



Thuyopsis dolobrata, which is, perhaps, best considered 

 a Cupressus rather than a Thuya, is a tree of high altitudes. 

 In the Nikko Mountains above Lake Umoto it is common 

 between five and six thousand feet over the sea-level, grow- 

 ing as an undershrub under the shade of dense Hemlock- 



forests, and here, in favorable positions, sometimes finally 

 rising to the height of forty or fifty feet, with a slender 

 trunk covered with bright red bark, long, pendulous, grace- 

 ful lower branches, and a narrow pyramidal top. This 

 handsome tree finds its northern home on the mountains 

 which surround the Bay of Aomori, in northern Hondo. It 

 is a species which evidently requires shade, at least while 

 young, and even the older plants, where we saw them, 

 were always surrounded and overtopped by taller trees. 

 The elevation at which it grows indicates that it should 

 prove hardy here if properly protected from the sun, espe- 

 cially during the winter, for in Japan the young plants are 

 not only shaded by the coniferous forest above them, but 

 are buried during several months under a continuous cov- 

 ering of snow. Under proper conditions this tree should 

 prove one of the best plants to form undergrowth in conif- 

 erous forests. The wood is considered valuable, and, 

 owing to its durability, is used in boat and bridge building. 

 We saw planted trees in the coniferous forests on the moun- 

 tain-slopes near Nakatsu-gawa, in the valley of the Kioso- 

 gawa, but no other indication that it is valued as a timber 

 or ornamental tree by the Japanese, who, according to 

 Dupont,* have produced a number of varieties, of which 

 the one with variegated foliage only has reached our 

 gardens. 



Of all the Japanese Conifers the most valuable is the 

 Hi-no-ki, Chamaecyparis (Retinospora) obtusa. In the 

 forests, planted on the lower slopes of the mountains in 

 the interior of Hondo and in some of the temple-groves, 

 notably in those of Nikko, this fine tree attains a height of 

 a hundred feet, with a straight trunk without branches for 

 fifty or sixty feet, and three feet through at the ground. At 

 elevations between two and three thousand feet above the 

 sea, usually on northern slopes and in granatic soil, which 

 it seems to prefer, the Hi-no-ki is largely planted as a tim- 

 ber-tree ; indeed, only the Cryptomeria, which seems to be 

 less particular about soil and exposure, is more planted for 

 timber in Japan. The tree is sacred among the disciples 

 of the Shinto faith, and is, therefore, cultivated in the neigh- 

 borhood of all Shinto temples, which are built exclusively 

 from Hi-no-ki wood. The palaces of the Mikado in Kyoto 

 were always made of it, and the roof was covered with long 

 strips of the bark. It is considered the best wood to lac- 

 quer ; at festivals food and drink are offered to the gods on 

 an unlacquered table of this wood, and the victim of hari- 

 kari received the dagger upon a table of the same material. 

 It is used for the frames of Buddhist temples and for the in- 

 terior of the most careTulIy finished and expensive houses. 

 The wood is white or straw-color, or sometimes pink, and 

 in grade, texture and perfume resembles that of the Alaska 

 Cedar, Chamaecyparis Nootkatensis. Like the wood of that 

 tree, it has a beautiful lustrous surface, and is straight- 

 grained, light, strong and tough, and remarkably free from 

 knots and resin. In America we have no wood of its class 

 which equals it in value, with the exception of that furnished 

 by the two species of Chamaecyparis of the Pacific coast, 

 and the Hi-no-ki might be introduced with advantage as 

 a timber-tree into some parts of the eastern states, where 

 it might find conditions which would insure its growth. 

 It has proved perfectly hardy in this country as far north as 

 Massachusetts, but the sea-level or the dry summers here do 

 not suit any of the Retinosporas, which give no promise of 

 long life or great usefulness anywhere on the Atlantic sea- 

 board. They should be tried, however, on the slopes of 

 the southern Alleghanies where they could find conditions 

 not very unlike those in which they flourish in their native 

 land. 



The second species of Chamaecyparis, C. pisifera, the 

 Sawara, is a less valuable tree than the Hi-no-ki, although 

 the two species are always found growing together in 

 plantations and in temple-gardens ; indeed, they can only be 

 distinguished after some practice, unless the cones are 

 examined, although after a few days among them the 



* Les Essences Foresticres du Japan. 



