THE OAK FAMILY. 69 



♦. 



bark of the Cork Oak. The leaves are oblong-oval, pointed, less coarsely toothed than those 

 of Quercus serrata, dark green and lustrous above, and pale, or nearly white, below. From 

 Quercus serrata, too, it differs in the smaller cups and in their shorter thicker scales. A 

 number of plants have been raised in the Arboretum from the acorns which we picked up 

 under these trees, and if they are not hardy here in New England they will certainly thrive in 

 the middle states. 



It is impossible to know whether many of the evergreen Oaks which we saw in Japan were 

 growing naturally or had been planted. In the gardens and temple grounds of Tokyo, 

 Yokohama, Kyoto, and other southern cities evergreen Oaks are the commonest trees ; but we 

 did not see them growing in the forest except near temples. The species most frequently 

 seen in TSkyo and Yokohama are Quercus cuspidata and Quercus glauca ; they are both large 

 and beautiful trees, said to be particularly conspicuous in early spring from the bright red 

 color of their young shoots and new leaves, which at that season make a charming contrast 

 with the dark and lustrous green of the older foliage. They should be introduced into our 

 southern states, where, probably, all the Japanese evergreen Oaks will flourish. The wood 

 produced by Quercus cuspidata and Quercus glauca does not appear to be valued in Japan, 

 but the acorns of the latter are of considerable commercial importance, and are cooked and 

 eaten by the Japanese. 



Quercus acuta, which is also much planted in T5ky6, we saw growing to the height of 

 more than eighty feet, with Quercus variabilis, in the temple grounds at Nakatsu-gawa, and 

 also near the temple of Higane, near Atami, on the coast. It is a noble tree, with ovate, 

 acute, long-pointed, dark green, thick, and lustrous leaves. Quercus acuta has been intro- 

 duced into English gardens, with a number of other evergreen Japanese Oaks, through the 

 efforts of the Veitches, who obtained it some years ago from their collector, Maries. But the 

 finest Oak-tree, and perhaps the finest tree which we saw in Japan, was a specimen of Quercus 

 gilva in the temple grounds at Nara, where there are a number of remarkable specimens of 

 this beautiful species, which is distinguished by its lanceolate-acute leaves, which are glandular- 

 serrate only above the middle, bright green on the upper, and thickly coated on the lower 

 surface, like the young branches, with pale or slightly ferrugineous tomentum. The largest 

 of these Nara trees was probably a hundred feet high, with a trunk covered with pale scaly 

 bark, which, breast-high from the ground, girthed just over twenty-one feet ; it rose without 

 a branch, and with little diminution of diameter, for something like fifty feet, and then 

 separated into a number of stout horizontal branches, which had not grown to a great 

 length, and formed a narrow cylindrical round-topped head. 



Of the other Japanese Oaks, Quercus Thalassica, Quercus Vibrayiana, and Quercus glabra, 

 we only saw occasional plants in gardens. The Quercus lacera of Blume we did not see 



at all. 



The Chestnut-tree is widely distributed through the mountain forests of Japan, and seems 

 to have received some attention as a fruit-tree from the Japanese, who recognize a number of 

 large-fruited varieties. Very large chestnuts appear in profusion in the markets of Aomori, 

 and are said to be produced in the immediate neighborhood of that northern town. But the 

 largest chestnuts of Japan, which equal in size the best marrons of southern Europe, are 



