78 FOREST FLORA OF JAPAN. 



the principal buildings, and carefully protected by low stone railings. There is a remarkable 

 specimen with pendulous branches standing before one of the mortuary temples in the Shiba 

 Park in Tokyo. 



In Japan, Junipers are much less common than they are in eastern America, and although 

 five or six species are included in the Floras of the empire, the genus does not make an impor- 

 tant element of the landscape, and one misses the dark spires which Juniperus Virginiana 

 sends up so frequently in many parts of eastern America. Juniperus Chinensis appears to 

 grow to a larger size than the other Japanese species, although we saw it in only one region 

 growing, as it appeared, without cultivation. This was on the high volcanic ridge which 

 dominates the Chikuma, one of the streams which flow from Asama-yama, in central Japan. 

 Over this elevated and inhospitable region occasional Junipers are scattered, the largest 

 attaining a height of thirty or forty feet, their wind-swept heads and stpaggling branches, 

 covered with gray-green foliage, adding to the dreariness of the scene. Before the Buddhist 

 temple of Zenkogi, in Nagano, the principal city in this part of Japan, two venerable Junipers 

 show to what size plants of this species can grow, and how picturesque they can become. 

 These trees are seventy or eighty feet high ; their hollow trunks, which are rather more than 

 six feet in diameter, support narrow heads of twisted and contorted branches clothed with 

 scanty foliage, and indicate that centuries may well have passed since the roots of these 

 marvelous trees first penetrated this sacred soil. On the rocky cliffs and grassy slopes of the 

 coast, fuUy exposed to the spray of the ocean, a prostrate variety of Juniperus Chinensis forms, 

 with its long creeping stems, dense mats, often of considerable size. It is said to be a feature 

 of the littoral vegetation of Japan ; but we saw only a few plants in Yezo, between Mororan 

 and the Aino village of Horobetsu, where they receive the unbroken sweep of the Pacific. 

 On the sandy dunes of the Bay of Hakodate, opposite that city, another littoral Juniper was 

 found by the American botanist Charles Wright, and later by Maximowicz. This is the 

 Juniperus conferta of Parlatore (Juniperus littoralis of Maximowicz), a species distinguished 

 by its stout crowded leaves and large globose fruit. We saw it on Hakodate Bay at the end 

 of September, and Mr. Veitch collected it earlier near Hanjo, on the west coast of Hondo, 

 but we were too early to obtain ripe fruit of this species or of the prostrate form of Juniperus 

 Chinensis. The only other Juniper we saw in Japan, Juniperus rigida, is a small tree some- 

 times twenty feet high, but more often a low spreading bush. It is common in the barrens 

 near Gifu, and appears to be generally distributed at low elevations in central Japan, although 

 it grows only on dry sterile gravelly soil. This is the Juniper which is most commonly 

 cultivated by the Japanese, and which is not infrequently an inhabitant of temple gardens. 

 Its long slender rigid leaves and small fruit, tipped with a minute mucro, serve to distinguish 

 it from Juniperus conferta. 



