THE MAGNOLIA FAMILY. ' 11 



toward the apex ; they are thin, light green on the upper and silvery white on the lower 

 surface, quite glabrous at maturity, five or six inches long, an inch and a half to two inches 

 broad, and are borne on slender petioles half an inch in length. When bruised they are 

 more fragrant than thbse of any species of Magnolia with which I am acquainted, exhahng the 

 delicate odor of anise-seed. The winter flower-bud is two thirds of an inch long, rather 

 obtuse, and protected by a thick coat of yellow-white hairs. The flowers of this tree are not 

 known to botanists, but from the shape and character of the winter-buds they are probably of 

 good size and produced in early spring before the appearance of the leaves. The fruit is 

 slender, flesh-color, an inch and a half to two inches long, and half an inch broad. 



Magnolia salicifolia^ grows on Mount Hakkoda in low wet situations, generally near 

 streams, and is evidently a moisture-loving plant. In November I found a single small plant 

 of this species near the town of Fukushima, on the hills which rise above the valley of the 

 Kisogawa, not far from the base of Mount Ontake, in central Japan. Magnolia salicifolia is 

 new to cultivation, and we were fortunate in obtaining a good supply of seeds, by means of 

 which, it is to be hoped, this interesting tree will soon appear in gardens. 



Among the Magnolias of Japan there is no evergreen species which resembles the great 

 evergreen Magnoha of our southern states, or at all equals it in the beauty of flowers and 

 foliage ; and the nearest approach to an evergreen Magnolia in the empire of the Mikado is 

 the representative of a closely allied genus, Micheha, differing from Magnolia in the position 

 of the flowers, which, instead of being terminal on the branches, are, except in the case of 

 one Indian species, axillary ; and in the number of ovules and seeds, of which there are two 

 in each carpel of Magnolia and more than two in each carpel of Michelia. A dozen species 

 are known, inhabitants of southern and southwestern Asia, including the islands of the Indian 

 Archipelago, and, with the exception of the Chinese Michelia fuscata (or as it is habitually 

 called in our southern states. Magnolia), which is cultivated for its exceedingly fragrant small 

 flowers in all warm temperate countries, the genus is not seen in American or European 

 gardens. 



The Japanese species, Michelia compressa^ (see Plate v.), as it appears in the Botanic 

 Garden of the University of TSkyo, is a tree thirty to forty feet in height, with a trunk 

 twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, covered with smooth dark bark, and rather slender 

 branches which form a compact handsome round-topped head. The winter-buds and the 

 branchlets during their first year are clothed with soft ferruginous or pale hairs ; in their 

 second season the branchlets are slender, light or dark brown, marked, especially near their 

 extremities, with large pale lenticels, and conspicuous from the raised nearly circular leaf-scars. 

 The leaves are oblong or narrowly obovate, graduaUy contracted into long slender petioles, 

 and are rounded or short-pointed at the apex, entire, coriaceous, conspicuously reticulate- 

 veined, and dark green and lustrous on the upper, and pale and duU on the lower surface ; 

 they are three or four inches long, an inch to an inch and a half broad, with petioles an 



1 Magnolia salicifolia, Maximowicz, Mel. Biol. viii. 509. — ^ Magnolia (Michelia) compressa, Maximowicz, Mel. 



Franohet & Savatier, Enum. PL Jap. i. 16. Biol. viii. 506. — Franchet & Savatier, Enum. PL Jap. i. 15. 



Biirgeria (?) salicifolia, Siebold & Zuccarini, Fl. Jap. 

 Fam. Nat. i. 187. — Miquel, ProL FL Jap. 144. 



