October 25, 1893.] 



Garden and Forest. 



443 



more ragged crown with its looser and more upright 

 branches of the Sawara stands out clearly to the eye 

 in contrast with the Hi-no-ki with its rounder top and 

 more pendulous branchlets. The wood is of a reddish 

 color, of a rougher grain and less valuable than that of the 

 Hi-no-ki, although the two trees are planted in about 

 equal numbers. As it grows here in our gardens, Chamae- 

 cyparis pisifera is a less ornamental plant than C. obtusa ; 

 it grows, however, more vigorously and promises to live 

 longer and obtain a greater size. All the other Retinos- 

 poras of our gardens are juvenile or monstrous forms of 

 these two trees. Some of the dwarf forms are much 

 cultivated in Japan, especially as pot-plants, but they 

 are not as popular there as I had been led to expect, 

 and are most often seen in the nursery gardens of the 

 treaty ports, where they are collected to please the fancy 

 of foreign purchasers. 



The most generally planted timber-tree of Japan is the 

 Sake, Cryptomeria Japonica, andits wood is more universally 

 used throughout the empire than that of any other Conifer. 

 It is one of the common trees of temple-gardens and road- 

 side plantations, and, when seen at its best, as in the 

 temple-groves at Nikko or Nara, where it rises to the 

 height of a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five feet, 

 with a tall shaft-like stem tapering abruptly from a broad 

 base, covered with bright cinnamon-red bark and crowned 

 with a regular conical dark green head, it is a beautiful 

 and stately tree which has no rival except in the Sequoias 

 of California. Great planted forests of the Cryptomeria 

 appear all over Hondo on broken foot-hills and mountain- 

 slopes up to an elvation of nearly three thousand feet 

 above the sea, low valleys and good soil being usually 

 selected for such plantations, as the trees need pro- 

 tection from high winds. The plantations decrease in size 

 and luxuriance in northern Hondo, and the cultivation of 

 the Sake does not appear to be attempted north of Hakkoda- 

 te where there is a grove of small trees on the slope of the 

 hill above the town. The wood is coarse-grained, with 

 thick layers of annual growth, dark reddish heart-wood 

 and thick pale sap-wood ; it is easily worked, strong and 

 durable, and is employed in all sorts of construction. The 

 bark, which is carefully stripped from the trees when 

 they are cut down, is an important article of commerce 

 and is used to cover the roofs of houses. A large round 

 bunch of branchlets covered with their leaves hung over 

 the door of a shop is the familiar sign of the dealer in sake. 



Japan owes much of the beauty of its groves and 

 gardens to the Cryptomeria. Nowhere is there a more 

 solemn and impressive group of trees than that which 

 surrounds the temples and tombs at Nikko, and the long 

 avenue of this tree, under which the descendants of leyasu 

 traveled from the capital of the Shoguns to do honor at the 

 burial-place of the founder of the Tokugawa dynasty, has not 

 its equal in stately grandeur. This avenue, if the story told 

 of its origin is true, can teach a useful lesson, and carries 

 hope to the heart of the planter of trees who will see in 

 it a monument more lasting than those which men some- 

 times erect in stone or bronze in the effort to perpetuate 

 the memory of their greatness. When the body of leyasu 

 was laid in its last resting-place on the Nikko hills his 

 successor in the Shogunate called upon the Damios of 

 the empire to send each a stone or bronze lantern to 

 decorate the grounds about the mortuary temples. All 

 complied with the order but one man, who, too poor to 

 send a lantern, offered instead to plant trees beside the 

 road, that visitors to the tomb might be protected from the 

 heat of the sun. The offer was fortunately accepted, and 

 so well was the work done that the poor man's offering 

 surpasses in value a thousand-fold those of all his more 

 fortunate contemporaries. 



Something of the beauty of this avenue appears in the 

 illustration on page 446 of this issue, although, without the 

 aid of colors, it is impossible to give an idea of the beauty 

 of the Cryptomeria. The planted avenue extends practically 

 all the way from Tokyo to Nikko, but it is only when the 



road reaches the foot-hills that it passes between rows of 

 Cryptomerias, the lower part being planted, as is the case 

 with the other great highways of Japan, with Pine-trees ; 

 nor, as it has olten been stated, is this avenue continuous, 

 for whenever a village occurs or a roadside tea-house, 

 which are scattered all along the road, there is a break in 

 the row of trees, and it is only in some particular spots 

 that a long view of continuous trees is obtained. The 

 railroad, which follows parallel and close to the avenue 

 for a considerable distance and then crosses it just before 

 the Nikko station is reached, is a serious injury to it. The 

 trees, as will be seen in the illustration, are planted on 

 high banks made by throwing up the surface-soil 

 from the roadway ; they are usually planted in double 

 rows, and often so close together that sometimes two or 

 three trees have grown together by a process of natural 

 grafting. Young trees are constantly put in to fdl gaps, 

 and every care apparently is taken to preserve and protect 

 the plantation. How many of the trees originally planted 

 when the avenue was first laid out in the beginning of the 

 seventeenth century are left it is impossible to say, but I sus- 

 pect that most of those now standing are of much later date. 

 One of the trees close to the upper end of the road which 

 had been injured by fire was cut down during our visit to 

 Nikko. The stump, breast-high above the ground, meas- 

 ured four feet inside the bark, and showed only one hun- 

 dred and five layers of annual growth. Few of the trees 

 in the avenue were much larger than this, although in the 

 neighborhood of the temples there are a few which girt 

 over twenty feet; these were probably planted when the 

 grounds were first laid out. 



The two, Chamfficyparis and the Cryptomeria, the most 

 valuable timber-trees in Japan, are now almost unknown 

 in a wild state. They may, perhaps, be found growing 

 naturally on some of the southern mountains which we 

 did not visit; wherever we went, however, we saw only trees 

 that had been planted by man, although some of the plan- 

 tations had evidently lived through several centuries. 



C. S. S. 



The Pines in October. 



NO frost has touched the Pines, and the old but ever-new 

 panorama of autumnal color glowing in leaf and flower 

 is again spread before the eye. TheSv^^amp Maples have donned 

 their deepest crimson and scarlet, and vie in brilliancy with 

 the Tupelos, whose spray-like horizontal branches are covered 

 with small fiery leaves. The Sweet Gum, too, is a grand factor 

 in this color-scheme. No tree of my acquaintance takes on so 

 many varied hues. The leaves on some of the trees are a deep 

 purple, on others a rich chocolate-brown, on others still they 

 are crimson and scarlet, while some turn yellow, blotched and 

 marbled with pink, and whatever their color the deep-lobed 

 fragrant leaves shine as if they were varnished. 



The Hickories and Birches supply the main yellow in this 

 field of color. The sturdy Oaks are slow to lay aside their rich 

 summer green, and only here and there are the leaves tipped 

 with crimson and scarlet. The Chestnuts also continue green, 

 with only now and then a faint tinge of yellow. The aromatic 

 Sassafras is brilliant in yellow and scarlet, while the Sumach 

 and many shrubs in the Heath family have turned a deep 

 crimson, shading to purple. IVlany old trees and stumps are 

 clothed from base to summit with Ampelopsis in most bril- 

 liant tints of crimson and scarlet, intermingled with clusters 

 of dark purple berries. 



The Asters and Golden-rods were never more beautiful than 

 they are this October. The dry, hot summer has kept them 

 back until the cooler weather of late September and October 

 came, when all the waste places and woodlands were suddenly 

 ablaze with gold and azure. Many other flowers are still 

 blooming freely, among them Rudbeckias and Helianfhus, 

 especially the pretty Helianthus angustifolius, which belongs 

 exclusively to the Pines. The Golden Asters, Chrysopsis 

 Mariana and C. falcata, are both here, their disk and ray flow- 

 ers ail bright yellow. Diplopappus linariifolius, with large 

 showy heads and light purple rays, mingles abundantly with 

 Chrysopsis, as does also the Blazing-star, Liatris spicafa and L. 

 graminifolia, which have handsome rose-colored flowers on 

 long wand-like stems. 



In places more marshy are the large Burr Marigold, with 



