70 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. 



found in the markets of Kobe and Osaka. It is these Kobe marrons which are now sent to 

 San Francisco in considerable quantities. Rein, whose book on the industries of Japan con- 

 tains the fullest and most exact account of Japanese rural economy which has yet been written, 

 believed that the chestnut was less used in Japan as an article of human food than in Europe, 

 but I have never seen chestnuts offered in such quantities in the markets of any American or 

 European city as in those of Tokyo and other Japanese towns. The Chestnut-trees which we 

 saw had the appearance of growing spontaneously ; and we saw nothing hke an orchard of 

 these trees, which, so far as we were able to observe, are not planted near dwellings or temples 

 or for shade. In Japan the Chestnut-tree grows at least as far north as central Yezo, and is 

 scattered through the mountain forests of Hondo, where it is most abundant at elevations of 

 about 2,500 feet above the ocean, growing on steep slopes in small open groves or mixed with 

 trees of other kinds. We saw no evidences that the Chestnut-tree grows in Japan to the 

 noble dimensions it sometimes reaches in Europe and on the slopes of the southern Alleghany 

 Mountains, and specimens over thirty feet high, with trunks more than a foot in diameter, 

 were rare in that part of the country which we visited. The Japanese Chestnut appears 

 to be more precocious than the American tree, and saplings only ten or twelve feet high are 

 often covered with fruit. The large-fruited northern form from the neighborhood of Aomori 

 should be brought to this country, as it may be expected to support a greater degree of 

 cold than the French or Kobe Marrons, and, therefore, to be available for cultivation much 

 farther north here. By its introduction it is possible that marron-growing may become a 

 profitable industry in states with climates as severe as those of Wisconsin, Michigan, &nd 

 Massachusetts. 



I The Beech in Japan is one of the noblest trees of the forest, as it is in eastern North 

 America and in Europe. Its range is similar to that of the Horse-chestnut, in the north 

 appearing on the shores of Volcano Bay in Yezo only a few feet above the level of the 

 ocean, and extending southward along the mountains of the other islands. It is, perhaps, the 

 commonest deciduous tree of the mountains of Hondo, where, between 3,000 and 4,000 feet, 

 or toward the upper limits of the deciduous forest, it sometimes covers wide areas, nearly to the 

 exclusion of other trees, or sometimes grows mixed with Oaks, Chestnuts, and occasional Firs 

 and Spruces. Trees eighty or ninety feet tall, with trunks more than three feet in diameter, 

 are not uncommon. The fact that Beech-wood is little used by the Japanese, and the com- 

 paratively inaccessible situations where it is mostly found, account, no doubt, for the abundance 

 of this tree in Japan and the existence of so many large individuals. This, the Asiatic form 

 of the European Fagus sylvatica, is hardly to be distinguished from the European tree, which 

 it resembles in every essential character. The variety Sieboldii (the Fagus Sieboldii of 

 Endlicher) I looked for in vain, and I hazard the opinion that it will turn out to be^ a tree of 

 the herbarium and not of the forest. 



I can throw no light upon the Japanese Willows which abound at the north in numerous 

 continental mostly shrubby forms ; they require more careful investigation than it was possi- 

 ble to give them during our hurried autumnal visit, when the flowers and fruit had disap- 

 peared. On the streets of Europeanized Tokyo, Willows are now chiefly planted as shade- 

 trees; they are the Weeping WiUow (Sahx Babylonica), an inhabitant of China, and a favorite 



