14 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. 



are formed early in the autumn. The branchlet ends during the winter in a small orbicular 

 scar between two buds when the leaves are opposite, and at the side of a single bud when 

 the leaves are alternate. Early in the following spring the buds develop short spur-like 

 almost obsolete branches, which produce a single leaf and terminal flowers. Later a bud 

 is formed in the axil of the leaf which, on fruit-bearing trees, appears between the leaf and 

 the stalk of the fruit-cluster. The branches, therefore, in their second and third years, 

 appear to be clothed with opposite or alternate leaves, although the leaves are in reality 

 produced on lateral branches. The leaves are involute and coated on the lower surface in 

 the bud with pale caducous pubescence, and are furnished with lanceolate acute caducous 

 stipules slightly connate toward the base. The staminate and pistillate flowers are produced 

 on separate individuals ; the staminate are subsessile, solitary or fascicled, the pistillate solitary 

 and pedunculate. The staminate flower is composed of a minute scarious calyx, divided to 

 the base into four acute apiculate divisions, and of an indefinite number of stamens; the 

 filaments are slender, elongated, and inserted on a conical receptacle ; the anthers are oblong- 

 lanceolate, attached at the base, apiculate by the prolongation of the narrow connective, and 

 two-celled, the cells opening longitudinally throughout their length. The pistillate flower is 

 composed of a membranaceous calyx divided into four unequal sepals laciniately cut on the 

 margins, and of four or sometimes of five or six carpels inserted by their oblique bases on a 

 prominent pyramidal receptacle ; they are gibbous and acute on the ventral suture, and 

 straight and rounded on the dorsal suture, and are gradually narrowed into elongated slender 

 styles stigmatic on their inner face below the middle ; the ovules are inserted in two rows on 

 the placenta, and are descending and anatropous. The fruit is a cluster of two to six more 

 or less spreading oblong stipitate follicles tipped with the persistent styles, and spHtting 

 through the ventral suture, which by a twist usually becomes external. The pericarp is thick, 

 light brown, and lustrous, and separates into two layers ; the outer layer is thin and mem- 

 branaceous, and the inner layer is hard and woody, and lustrous on the inner surface. The 

 seeds, which are closely imbricated in two rows, are pendulous, compressed, nearly square, 

 attached obliquely, and covered with a thin, light brown membranaceous coat, which is 

 produced into an elongated terminal wing three times as long as the body of the seed and 

 slightly narrowed at the apex. The embryo is axile in copious fleshy albumen, with plane 

 cotyledons about as long as the slender superior radicle turned toward the hilum. 



The trunk of Cercidiphyllum Japonicum is covered with thick pale bark, deeply furrowed, 

 and broken into narrow ridges. Similar bark covers the principal branches ; these are very 

 stout, and issuing from the stem nearly at right angles, gradually droop, the slender red- 

 dish branchlets in which they end being often decidedly pendulous. The upper branches 

 and branchlets are erect, the whole skeleton of the tree showing, even in summer, through the 

 sparse smaU nearly circular leaves, which are placed remotely on the branches ; in the autumn 

 the leaves turn clear bright yellow. In port and in the general appearance of its foliage, 

 CercidiphyUum, as it appears in the forests of Yezo, might, at first sight, be mistaken for a 

 venerable Ginkgo-tree, which in old age has the same habit, with pendulous branches below 

 and erect branches above ; but the trunk and its covering are very different in the two trees. 



CercidiphyUum Japonicum is distributed from central Yezo southward through nearly the 



