^ THE WALNUT FAMILY. 61 



Pterocarya, the curious genus with leaves like those of a Hickory, and long slender spikes 

 of small hard nut-like fruits surrounded by foliaceous bracts, appears in Japan with one 

 species ; a second inhabits China, and a third, the type of the genus, the Caucasus. The 

 Japanese Pterocarya rhoifolia is a large and important timber-tree. We first met with it on 

 the lower margin of the Hemlock forest about Lake Yumoto, in theNikk5 Mountains, where it 

 grows to no great size ; and it was not until we ascended Mount Hakkoda, in the extreme 

 northern part of Hondo, that we saw this fine tree to advantage. On the slopes of this moun- 

 tain it is exceedingly common at elevations of from 2,500 to 4,000 feet above the sea, and, 

 next to the Beech, is the largest deciduous tree of the region, often rising to a height of 

 eighty feet, and producing trunks two and a half feet in diameter. It is a broad-topped 

 tree, with stout branches, which spread nearly at right angles to the stem, and form a dense 

 leafy crown. In winter the Japanese Pterocarya may be readily recognized by its orange- 

 colored branchlets, thickly beset with small light-colored lenticels, and by the stout acute 

 buds, three quarters of an inch long, covered with apiculate black puberulous scales conspic- 

 uously marked with clusters of pale hairs. The leaves are unequally pinnate, eight or ten 

 inches long, and four to six inches broad, with stout hairy petioles, and six or seven pairs 

 of lateral leaflets, which are acute, unequally rounded at the base, long-pointed, finely serrate, 

 yellowish green, and covered on the lower surface of the midribs with pale or rusty brown 

 pubescence. In the first days of October, when the fruit was fully ripe and just ready to 

 drop, the leaves were beginning to turn yellow; a month later, in the forest above Lake 

 Yumoto, the trees were bare of foliage. A specimen of the wood of Pterocarya rhoifolia, 

 for which I am indebted to the officers of the Forestry Department at Aomori, is white, soft, 

 very light, and straight-grained, with bands of open ducts marking the layers of annual 

 growth ; it might be mistaken at the first glance for a piece of our American white pine. 



The other Japanese member of the Walnut family, Platycarya strobilacea, we saw only in 

 the Tokyo Botanic Garden, where there is a tree fifteen or twenty feet high, which two years 

 ago was covered with the curious cone-like heads of fruit which distinguish this genus. In 

 the mountain regions of Kyushu it is said to become a large and stately tree. Platycarya is 

 occasionally cultivated in the botanic gardens of southern Europe, but I am not aware that it 

 is growing in the United States. 



Myrica Gale, in a distinct pubescent form, is as common in low marshy ground in Yezo 

 as it is in the same latitude in North America, and a second species of Myrica, akin to oiu- 

 Bayberry, inhabits the sandy coast, although it does not range far north of the thirty-fifth 

 parallel. This is the handsome evergreen Myrica rubra, a small shapely tree, now well known 

 in California gardens, and occasionally cultivated in the southern Atlantic states. 



In Japan, as in all other temperate northern lands, the Cupuliferse abound, and the decid- 

 uous forests of the northern islands are principally composed of Oaks, Beeches, Hornbeams, 

 Alders, and Birches. The mountain forests of Hondo and those of Yezo contain many Birch- 

 trees, which are also important elements of the forest in all northern and northeastern Asia. 

 The Old World White Birch, Betula alba, in at least three of its forms, is common in central 

 Yezo, and we saw also a number of trees of the typical form on the plains between Chuzenji 

 and Yumoto, in the Nikko Mountains. The most distinct of the Japanese forms of Betula 



