6 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. 



On the other hand, the Japanese will not find in our forests Euptelea and Cercidiphyllum 

 o£ the Magnolia family, Trochodendron, Idesia, the arborescent Ternstroemiacese (Tern- 

 strcemia, Cleyera, Eurya, and Camellia), Phellodendron and Hovenia, Euscaphis, Maackia and 

 Albizzia, Distylium, Acanthopanax, Syringa, many arborescent Lauracese (Cinnamomum, 

 Machilus and Actinodaphne), which, next to the Evergreen Oaks, are the most distin- 

 guishing features of the forest flora of southern Japan. Nor will they find the beautiful 

 arborescent Linderas which abound in Japan, while in America the genus is only represented 

 by two unimportant shrubs, the arborescent Euphorbiaceae, like Buxus, Daphniphyllum, 

 Aleurites, Mallotus, and Excoecaria, or Zelkova, Aphananthe, Broussonetia, and Debregeasia, 

 or find anything to remind them of Pterocarya and Platycarya, Cryptomeria, Cephalotaxus, 

 and Sciadopitys. 



The forests of the two regions possess in common Magnolia and iEsculus, which are more 

 abundant in species and individuals in America than in Japan. The Ehuses or Sumachs are 

 very similar in the two regions, and so are the Witch Hazel and the arborescent Aralia. 

 Cornus macrophyUa of Japan is only an enlarged Cornus alternifolia of eastern America, and 

 the so-called Flowering Dogwoods of the two countries are not unlike. The Japanese 

 ■^ Walnut is very like the American Butternut, while, rather curiously, the Japanese Thuya and 

 the two Chamsecyparis, the Piceas and Abies, resemble species of Pacific North America, a 

 region whose flora has little affinity with that of eastern Asia. Tumion is common to the 

 two regions ; in eastern America it is one of the most local of all our trees, while in Japan it 

 is abundant in the mountainous regions of the central and southern parts of the empire. 



Apart from the characters which distinguish related genera and species of Japanese trees 

 from their American congeners there are many aspects of vegetation which make the two 

 countries unlike. The number of broad-leaved evergreen trees is much greater in southern 

 -<\^ Japan than in the southern United States, there being fifty species of these trees in the 

 former, and only twenty in eastern America (exclusive always of southern Florida), and the 

 I general aspect of the groves and woods at the sea-level, even in the latitude of Tokyo, is of 

 broad-leaved evergreens. The number of evergreen shrubs in proportion to the entire flora is 

 much greater in Japan, too, than it is in America, and plants of this character grow much 

 farther north in the former than in the latter country. The small number of species of 

 Pinus in Japan, and their scarcity at the north, is in striking contrast to the number and 

 distribution of the species of this genus in eastern America, where there are thirteen species to 

 only five in Japan, including one shrub. In Japan the Hemlock forms continuous and almost 

 unbroken forests of great extent on the mountain-slopes, which are over 5,000 feet above the 

 sea, while in eastern America this tree is rarely found except scattered in small groves or as 

 _\ single individuals through the deciduous-leaved forests. On the other hand, Picea and Abies, 

 which in America form immense forests almost to the exclusion of other species, grow, 

 wherever I have seen them in Japan, singly, or, in the case of Abies, in small groves on the 

 lower border of the Hemlock forests or mingled with deciduous-leaved trees. Picea Ajanensis 

 is said, however, to form extensive forests in some parts of western Yezo, and Professor 

 Miyabe informs me that in the extreme northern part of that island there are fine continuous 

 forests of Abies Sachalinensis. In northern Japan and on the high mountains of the central 



