22 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. 



surface, ovate-acute, often slightly falcate, long-pointed, rounded or subcordate at the base, 

 finely serrate, stalked, four to six inches long and two to four inches broad. The flowers, 

 which are greenish white and small, and inconspicuous like those of all the plants of this 

 genus, appear on the Hakone Mountains at the end of August or early in September in clus- 

 ters four or six inches across. The fruit I have not seen. In habit and in foliage this is 

 one of the most beautiful , trees which I saw in Japan ; but as it does not range far north or 

 ascend to the high mountains, it is not probable that it will prove hardy in our northern 

 states. The other Japanese species of Xanthoxylum are shrubs of no great beauty or interest. 

 Simarubse, a mostly tropical family, to which the familiar Ailanthus of northern China 

 belongs, appears in Japan only in Picrasma quassioides, a member of a small tropical Asian 

 genus, which, as an inhabitant of Yezo, seems to have strayed far beyond the limits of its 

 present home. As Picrasma quassioides appears in the forests near Sapporo, it is a slender 

 tree twenty to thirty feet in height, with a trunk about a foot in diameter. The branchlets 

 are stout, dark red-brown, and conspicuously marked by pale lenticels. The leaves are 

 unequally pinnate, with slender reddish petioles and four or five pairs of lateral leaflets, which 

 increase in size from the lower pair to the uppermost ; they are membranaceous, very bright 

 green, ovate-acute, finely serrate, stalked, three to five inches long, and an inch to an inch 

 and a half broad. The flowers, which are produced in loose, long-branched, few-flowered, 

 axillary clusters, are yellow-green, and not at all showy ; but the drupe-like fruit is bright 

 red and handsome in September, when the thickened branches of the corymb are of the same 

 color. It is, however, for the beauty of the color of its autumn foliage that Picrasma quas- 

 sioides should be brought into our gardens. The leaves turn early, first orange and then 

 gradually deep scarlet, and few Japanese plants which I saw are so beautiful in the autumn 

 as this small tree, which, judging from its northern home in Japan, may be expected to 

 flourish in our climate. It is a plant of wide distribution, not only in Yezo and Hondo, but 

 in Corea and in northern and central China ; it occurs on Hongkong and Java, and is 

 common on the subtropical Himalayas, which in Garwhal it ascends to an elevation of 8,000 

 feet above the ocean. To the bitterness of the inner bark, which in this particular resembles 

 that of the Quassia-tree of the same family, it owes its specific name. 



