THE MAPLE FAMILY. 31 



growing for its beauty as well as for the unusual form of the leaves, which resemble those of 

 the Hornbeam, for which, at first sight, it might easily be mistaken. 



Acer Tschonoskii is common near the margins of Lake Chuzenji in the Nikko Mountains, 

 and a thousand feet higher is found as a common shrub in the Hemlock forests which cover 

 the slopes rising from Lake Yumoto. It is a small bushy tree, perhaps twenty feet tall, with 

 bright red twigs and ample leaves, not unlike those of Acer capillipes in shape and cut- 

 ting, although in autumn they turn deep scarlet. We could not find a single seed of this 

 pretty plant, which has probably never been cultivated. Acer rufinerve, hardly distinguish- 

 able from the Moosewood of our northern forests (Acer Pennsylvanicum), and Acer cratsegi- 

 folium, both familiar now in our gardens, are rather common, especially the latter, in all the 

 mountain regions of central Japan, and need no mention here. 



Among the rarer and less known species we found Acer diabolicum rather common in the 

 neighborhood of Nikko, where it is a round-topped tree twenty to thirty feet tall, very Hke 

 the European Sycamore Maple in habit and general appearance, with dull yellow-green leaves 

 four or five inches across, which apparently do not change color before falling, and large 

 dirty brown fruit covered on the nutlets with fine stinging hairs. This seemed the least 

 beautiful of the Maples which we encountered in the forests of Japan. Acer distylum I only 

 saw in the Botanic Garden in Tokyo, and Acer pycnanthum, Acer purpurascens, Acer argu- 

 tum, Acer parvifolium, and Acer Sieboldianum, the last, probably, only a pubescent-leaved 

 variety of Acer Japonicum, I looked for in vain. 



Of Maples of the section Negundo, with the male and female flowers on separate plants and 

 pinnate or ternate leaves, there are two species in Japan, — Acer cissifolium and Acer Niko- 

 ense. The first is said to be common, and widely distributed from southern Yezo through 

 the mountain ranges of the main island, but I only saw a few small plants in hedge-rows near 

 Nikko, none of them half the size of specimens which may be seen in some Massachusetts 

 gardens, where Acer cissifolium is a handsome compact round-headed little tree with slen- 

 der graceful leaves, of a delicate green in summer, and orange and red in late autumn, and 

 where it is one of the most distinct and satisfactory of the Japanese trees which have been 

 tried in our climate. 



The second Japanese Negundo (see Plate x.), as it appears in the forests of Japan, is a 

 distinct and beautiful tree, which, if it thrives in this country, will be a real addition to our 

 plantations. Acer Nikoense grows to a height of forty or, perhaps, fifty feet, with a trunk 

 twelve to eighteen inches in diameter covered with smooth dark slightly furrowed bark, and 

 stout rather slender branches, which form a narrow round-topped head. The branchlets are 

 thick and rigid, and are coated at first, like the inner scales of the ovate-acute winter-buds, the 

 young leaf-stalks, the under surface of the young leaflets, the peduncles and pedicels, with 

 short thick pale or rufous villous tomentum ; at the end of their first season the branchlets 

 are dark red-brown and are marked with numerous minute lenticular dots. The leaves are 

 ternate, with stout rigid petioles an inch or an inch and a half in length, and ovate or obovate, 

 acute, long-pointed, entire, or remotely and irregularly coarsely and crenately serrate leaflets, 

 the terminal leaflet being long-stalked, symmetrical, and wedge-shaped at the base, the lateral 

 leaflets rounded on the lower, and obhque on the upper edge at the base, and sessile or nearly 



