12 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. 



inch in length, and fall, when a year old, after the appearance of the new shoots. The flowers, 

 which are very fragrant, are from an inch to an inch and a quarter across when expanded, 

 with pale yellow narrow obovate sepals and petals, nearly sessile anthers, and a stipitate 

 head of pistils, the ovaries, according to Maximowicz, each containing five or six ovules. 

 The cone of fruit is two inches long, and is raised on a stalk half an inch or more in length ; 

 the rusty brown thick-walled carpels, which are marked with large pale circular dots, usually 

 containing three seeds ; these are broadly ovate and much flattened by mutual pressure. 



Michelia compressa, which is the most boreal species of its genus, was discovered near 

 Nagasaki by Maximowicz, who saw a single tree. Oldham, an English botanist, collected it 

 near the base of Fuji-san, doubtless from a cultivated tree, and it is said to be found in 

 several places in the extreme southern part of the empire, although I have never seen it 

 except in the Botanic Garden of Tokyo, where there are several large trees, from which were 

 collected the specimens figured in our illustration. It is not improbable that Michelia is at 

 the northern limit of its range in Japan and that it will be found to be more at home on 

 the Loochoo Islands or on Formosa when the interesting flora of these islands is carefully 

 explored. The fact that Michelia compressa flourishes in Toky5, where our southern ever- 

 green Magnolia hardly survives, indicates that it may perhaps be grown as far north as 

 Washington and, possibly, Philadelphia, in southern England and Ireland, and on the west 

 coast of France, that is, in regions where no other species of this genus can exist in the open 

 ground, and where broad-leaved evergreen trees are rare and much desired. 



The Japanese lUicium is a beautiful and interesting plant. It is the representative of a 

 genus with two species in our southern states and half a dozen others in India and southern 

 China, one of which, lUicium verum, supplies the star anise of the pharmacists. Illicium 

 anisatum, or as it should, perhaps, be called, Illicium religiosum, is a beautiful small evergreen 

 tree, fifteen or twenty feet high, with brilliant persistent leaves and smaU fragrant yeUow 

 flowers. It is one of the sacred plants of Japan. Siebold considered it a native of China or 

 Corea and an introduction by Buddhist priests into Japan. This may be the correct view, 

 although Japanese botanists now believe it to be a native of the southern part of the empire, 

 where Kein found it, as he supposed, growing wild. Sacred to Buddha, it is always planted 

 in the neighborhood of his temples, and is common in private gardens as far north as the 

 thirty-fifth degree of latitude. The branches of this tree, especially when it is in flower, are 

 used to decorate the altars in the temples, or in cemeteries serve to mark the respect of the 

 living for the dead. From the powdered bark, mixed with resin, are prepared the " smoke 

 candles " with which incense is made in the temples, and with which the " moxa " is burned 

 on the human body as a sovereign cure for many of its ills. 



The remaining Japanese plants of the Magnolia family, Kadsura and Schizandra, are 

 woody cHmbers. Kadsura Japonica is the type of a genus consisting of seven or eight species, 

 all natives of southern and western Asia, and its most northern member growing spontane- 

 ously in the southern islands and at the sea-level in Hondo as far north as the thirty-fifth 

 degree of latitude. The flowers are not showy, but it is a plant of extraordinary beauty in 

 the autumn, when the clusters of scarlet fruit are ripe, their briUiancy being heightened by 

 contrast with the dark green lustrous persistent leaves. There is a fine specimen of this plant , 



