40 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. 



knowledge o£ the flora of Hokkaido is unrivaled. Pyrus Miyabei' is one of the common 

 trees of the forests of central Yezo, and, according to Maximowicz, it inhabits the province of 

 Nambu, in Hondo, and southern Manchuria. So far as I know, it has not been introduced 

 into our gardens, where it may be expected to flourish. 



Of true apple-trees, there is apparently only a single indigenous species in Japan, the 

 Pyrus Toringo of Siebold, This is the tree which is often cultivated in American and Euro- 

 pean gardens as Pyrus Malus floribunda, Pyrus microcarpa, Pyrus Parkmani, Pyrus Halleana, 

 Pyrus Sieboldii, and Pyrus Ringo. It is a common and widely distributed plant in Japan, 

 growing from the sea-level in Yezo to elevations of several thousand feet in central Hondo, 

 usually in moist ground in the neighborhood of streams. Sometimes it is a low bush, but 

 more often a tree fifteen to thirty feet in height, with a short stout trunk and spreading 

 branches. The leaves are exceedingly variable, and on the same plant are often oblong, 

 rounded or acute at the apex, or broadly ovate or more or less deeply three-lobed. The 

 fruit, which, like that of the Siberian Pyrus baccata, loses the calyx before .it is fully ripe, 

 resembles a pea in size and shape, and in color varies from bright scarlet to yellow. In early 

 spring Pyrus Toringo is one of the most beautiful of the trees found in our gardens, where it 

 is perfectly hardy, and where it covers itself every year with fragrant pink or red single or 

 semi-double flowers. 



Pyrus Sinensis, the common cultivated Pear-tree of Japan, although now growing sponta- 

 neously in some mountain regions, is probably a native of northern China and Manchuria ; 

 and the only indigenous Pear-tree is Pjtus Tschonoskii. This interesting and handsome tree 

 was first described by Maximowicz,^ whose collector, Tschonoski, brought to him from the 

 slopes of Fuji-san a single fruit and a portion of a leaf, now preserved in the herbarium of 

 the Imperial Botanic Garden at St. Petersburg. Nothing more was seen of it until Mr. J. H. 

 Veitch and I encountered in the woods near Nikko a single tree of a Pyrus, which by 

 subsequent comparison with Tschonoski's specimen, proved to have been this tree. It is 

 evidently rare, for I only saw it in two other localities, — in the grounds of a temple near 

 Nekatsu-gawa, where there was a single specimen, and in the woods at the head of the Ysui- 

 toge, near Karuizawa, at the base of the volcano Asama-yawa, in central Hondo, where there 

 were two or three trees. Pyrus Tschonoskii (see Plate xiv.), which is a Pear-tree, rather than 

 an Apple as described by Maximowicz, is, as we saw it, a tree thirty to forty feet in height, 

 with a trunk about a foot in diameter, covered with smooth pale bark, and a narrow round- 

 topped head. The branchlets are stout and terete, and are marked with small oblong or 

 circular orange-colored lenticels ; during their first summer they are red-brown, rather lus- 

 trous, covered with loose pale tomentum, and encircled at the base by the conspicuous ring- 

 like scars left by the falling of the inner scales of the winter-buds ; later they grow darker, 

 and sometimes nearly black. The winter-buds are ovate, obtuse, and rather less than a 

 quarter of an inch long, and are covered with loosely imbricated chestnut-brown lustrous 

 scales, tomentose above the middle, and ciliate on the margins. The leaves are ovate, acumi- 



1 Pyrus Miyabei. Maximowicz, Mel. Biol. ix. 173. — '■ Wenzig, Linnoea, xxxiii. 



Cratsegus alnifolia, Siebold & Zuccarini, Abbild. Acad. 61. 

 Munch, iv. 130. — Kegel, Act. Hort. Petrop. i. 125. Aronia alnifolia, Deoaisne, Nouv. Arch. Mm. x. 100. 



Sorbus alnifolia, Miquel, Ann. Mus. Lugd. Bat. i. 249.— ^ Mel. Biol. xii. 165. 



