ERNEST FRANCIS COE 
Landscape Architect 
KEEPING JAPANESE PICTURE 
-PLANTS ALIVE 
Y OWN experience with the interesting and often splen- 
HlPjjpJ did old dwarf trees and other plants from Japan does 
not coincide with the general impression that it is diffi- 
J2pP§| cult to maintain them in a state of health and vigor. 
Unquestionably the average person’s experience is the basis of 
the popular belief, but it is more than ever worth while nowa¬ 
days to realize how they can be successfully handled since they 
are no longer offered through importing houses because of the 
Federal Horticultural Board embargo. 
My plants (shown in accompanying photographs) are part of 
a collection picked up in Japan twelve years ago and have 
thriven happily under my care ever since their arrival in this 
country. Their journey over land and sea covered three 
months, but so skilfully had they been packed that they ap¬ 
peared but little the worse for their long subjection “in dur¬ 
ance vile.” 
The Japanese keep this type of plant in jars and vases, some 
specimens having a reputed age of several hundred years. A 
careful search while in Japan for some obscure or hidden secret 
as to their culture led me to believe that nothing other than a 
little sensible study of the individual plant’s requirements was 
necessary, although one will quickly learn to appreciate the 
patient skill required in the training of some of these wonderful 
picture-plants, in some instances covering a period of many 
years. These now illustrated are hardy, and include Oak, 
Maple, Juniper, Azalea, Pines, 
and Cypresses—all requiring a 
winter rest. 
With this fact in mind, and 
appreciating its importance, 
these plants have been 
placed each winter in a 
pit or storage-house, 
where they were some¬ 
what protected from 
the extremes of the out¬ 
side weather conditions, 
HINOKI CYPRESS 
I his plant (Chamaecyparis 
obtusa) 28 inches in height, 
shows evidence of having been 
for many years pot-grown 
and most carefully trained 
but where the temperature remained low, the air moder¬ 
ately moist, and where the soil in the pots often remained 
solid with ice for weeks at a time. Each spring, the plants 
are brought out into the air and sunlight and so placed that 
they enjoy plenty of exposure to both. 
Under such conditions they come into normal growth 
AN OLD OAK 
The trunk of this tree (Quer- 
cus dentata) bears every indi¬ 
cation of being many years 
old though the tree is only 32 
inches high as against the 80 
feet it sometimes attains under 
normal conditions. It blooms 
and bears fruit regularly 
331 
