Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu/136

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278
The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland

the mountains. The wood, according to this author, is light, with little difference between the sapwood and heartwood, and when well seasoned does not warp or split, and on this account it is much esteemed for making gun-stocks. Sargent’ did not find this tree in Japan, and says that its peculiar nuts are considered by Japanese botanists to be merely extreme varieties of Juglans Sieboldiana. However, the species is kept up as distinct by Matsumura,’ and cultivated specimens at Kew of the two species can be readily distinguished.

Rehder states in 1903 that a tree in the Arnold Arboretum raised from seed of true Juglans cordiformis fruited some years ago. The fruits, however, did not show the characteristic form of this species, and he doubted whether the tree in question was true cordiformis, or only a variety of Sieboldiana with aberrant fruit.

Nuts were obtained in 1862 by Albrecht,’ physician to the Russian Consulate at Hakodate, which were sown in the Botanic Garden at St. Petersburg, and produced healthy plants, which were about four feet high, in 1872. Maximowicz also found the nuts in the market at Yokohama. Sargent, who found them offered for sale by the Nurserymen’s Association of Yokohama, was informed that they were collected on the slopes of Fujisan.

The tree has been recently sent out by Continental nurserymen, and is hardy in this country. A specimen at Kew, which was raised in 1899 from seed procured from Harvard, is now about twenty feet high. The male catkins, which are pro- duced freely and expand in May, give the tree a striking appearance, but the fruit has not yet matured. (A.H.)


1 Forest Flora of Japan, 60 (1894).

2 Shokubutsu Mei-I, 155 (1895).

3 See Maximowicz, loc. cit., and Bretschneider, European Bot. Discoveries in China, i. 622 (1898).