44 
a broad flattened or somewhat rounded head. It is a tree sometimes 
seventy-flve feet tall, with a trunk up to three feet in diameter. This 
tree is common in some parts of Hupeh and Schez’uan in mixed woods, 
and with F. Engleriana sometimes makes pure forests. The young 
plants of these three Chinese Beeches brought by Wilson to the Arbor- 
etum in March, 1911, have been growing in the open ground since their 
arrival. As they have in these ten years experienced the two severest 
winters of which there is a Massachusetts record, it is fair to suppose 
that they are hardy, although only time can show if they are capable 
of growing here into large and healthy trees. 
The Japanese Beeeh-trees are better known in the Arboretum, asFagus 
Sieboldii was first raised here in 1893 from seed brought from Japan by 
Professor Sargent, and F. japonica was raised here only a few years later. 
The former is one of the great trees of Japan, often growing to the 
height of ninety feet and forming a trunk three feet in diameter. It 
is perhaps the commonest deciduous-leafed tree on the mountains of 
Hondo, where at altitudes between three and four thousand feet toward 
the upper limits of deciduous-leafed trees it forms nearly pure forests, 
or is mixed with Oaks and Chestnuts, and occasionally with Firs and 
Spruces. Northward, as on the shores of Volcano Bay in Hokkaido, 
it grows at sea-level, but southward it is found only on mountain slopes. 
Fagus Sieboldii has proved to be perfectly hardy in the Arboretum 
.where it makes a handsome tree with pale bark; it has not yet pro- 
duced fruit here. Fugus japonica, which grows on the mountains of 
central Hondo up to altitudes of five thousand feet, is much less abund- 
ant and less widely distributed than F. Sieboldii. It is a small tree 
with a trunk dividing near the ground into two or three large stems. 
This tree is growing well in the Arboretum. The plants, however, are 
still small with stems which do not yet show a tendency to divide. 
In the Arboretum collection are now established Fagus grandifolia 
and its southern variety caroliniana, F. sylvatica and its varieties 
macrophylla {latifolia), purpurea, purpurea f. penduLa, heterophylla, 
penduLa, remiUyensis, fastigiata {dawyckii), roiundifoLia, grandidentata, 
zlatia and cristata, F. orientalis F. longrpetiolata, F. Engleriana and 
F. lucida, F. Sieboldii and F. japonica. The two Beech-trees not in 
the Arboretum and not yet introduced into cultivation are Fagus Hyatae, 
which is known to grow only on a single mountain in the Head Hun- 
ters country of Formosa which Wilson could not visit when he explored 
that island, and F. multinervis confined to Dagelet Island, a small iso- 
lated island in the Japan Sea fifty miles from the east coast of central 
Korea, The seedling plants collected by Wilson during his visit to 
Dagelet in June, 1917, died before they reached the Arboretum. 
Several interesting forms of the European Beech have not been 
planted in the Arboretum because there is no room for them in the 
space which can be devoted to the Beech Collection, and unless more 
room can be obtained for them the trees in this collection will never 
appeal to the imagination or create the enthusiasm which the Beech-trees 
on Longwond Mall in Brookline create— trees in which that town may 
well take pride. 
