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and the form with flowers tinged with pink (var. rosea). The Maackias 
and Sophoras are growing on the slope on the right hand side of 
Bussey Hill Road above the path which connects that road with the 
Meadow Road. 
The Aralia Family supplies northern plantations with three handsome 
trees which flower in August. The most interesting of these three 
trees, possibly because it is still the least known in this country, is 
Acanthopanax ricinifolium, an inhabitant of the forests of Japan and 
Korea where it sometimes grows to the height of seventy or eighty 
feet and forms a massive trunk and great wide-spreading branches 
armed, like the stems of young trees, with numerous stout prickles. 
To the shape of the leaves, which somewhat resemble those of the 
plant which produces the fruit from which castor oil is obtained, this 
Acanthopanax owes its specific name. The leaves, which are nearly 
circular and more or less deeply five- or seven-lobed, and fifteen or 
sixteen inches in diameter, , hang on long slender stalks. The small 
white flowers are arranged in compact, long-stemmed clusters which 
form a compound flat terminal panicle which varies from twelve to 
eighteen inches in diameter and is well raised above the leaves. In the 
early autumn the flowers are followed by small black and shining fruits. 
Of the trees growing in the Arboretum this Acanthopanax most de- 
parts in appearance from the trees of New England; and no other tree 
here is regarded with more curiosity. The largest specimen is grow- 
ing by the side of the pond on the right hand side of the Meadow Road 
near its junction with the Bussey Hill Road; there is another large 
specimen in the mixed border plantation in the rear of the group of 
Viburnums near the junction of the Bussey Hill and Valley Roads. 
These trees have not before been more thickly covered with clusters 
of flower-buds. 
Aralia spinosa is a common tree, growing usually in the neighbor- 
hood of streams in the region from western Pennsylvania to Missouri, 
and southward to northern Florida, Lousiana and eastern Texas. It is 
a slender tree thirty or thirty-five feet high with a stem rarely more 
than eight inches in diameter and wide-spreading branches furnished, 
like the young trunk, with stout scattered prickles. The leaves, which 
are clustered near the end of the branches, are] from three to four feet 
long and about two and a half feet wide, on stems from eighteen to 
twenty inches in length which clasp the branches with their enlarged 
base, and are usually armed with slender prickles. The small, green- 
ish white flowers appear in August in many-flowered umbels arranged 
in broad compound panicles three or four feet long which rise above 
the leaves singly or two or three together from the end of the branches. 
The small black fruit ripens in early autumn. This Aralia is now 
thoroughly established at the northern base of Hemlock Hill in the 
rear of the plantation of Laurels (Kalmia) and is spreading to a con- 
siderable distance from the original plant by means of underground 
stems from which new plants rise. 
Aralia chinensis, so closely related to the American Aralia that it 
has sometimes been considered a geographical variety of that tree, ap- 
pears in the Arboretum collection in several varieties. The best known 
of these varieties, a native of Manchuria and eastern Siberia (var. 
mandschurica), is a hardier plant at the north than the American spe- 
