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It is distinguished from the other species by its glabrous branchlets and by its leaves bifid at the apex. The leaves are pectinately arranged, 3⁄4 to 1 inch long, 1⁄12to 1⁄20 inch wide, straight or curved, yellowish green above, conspicuously white beneath, broadest near the contracted base, and gradually tapering to an acute apex, which is minutely bifid. The cones are small, 11⁄2 to 13⁄4 inch long, 1 inch in diameter; scales few, about twenty in number, more woody in consistence than those of P. Douglasii, glabrous externally ; bracts strongly reflexed, the central awn-like lobe only slightly larger than the lateral lobes. According to Shirasawa, its discoverer,’ the tree attains a height of 100 feet and a diameter of 3 feet, and occurs at 1000 to 3000 feet elevation in the mountains of the provinces of Ise, Yamato, and Kii in Japan. It grows in mixed forests, composed mainly of Tsuga, Oak, Beech, Mag- nolia, and other broad-leaved species. Elwes, when at Koyasan, endeavoured to reach the habitat of this species, but owing to the distance, the heavy rain, and inability to find a guide, was unsuccessful. According to Hayata,’ this species occurs also on Mount Morrison in Formosa. Its Japanese name is Zogasawara.
Young plants are reported by Beissner* to be in cultivation in Ansorge’s nursery, at Flottbeck near Altona, and in the Botanic Garden at Hamburg. Two small branches, recently sent to Kew from Flottbeck and from Herr Langen’s nursery at Grevenbroich, are only distinguishable from those of the American species by some of the leaves being bifid at the apex. Apparently in the young stage, the leaves are acute or mucronate and entire, the bifid character only being assumed after two or three years.
Except for its botanical interest this species does not seem likely to have any value in this country.‘ (A.H.)
1 Shirasawa discovered this species in July 1893, on the road between Owashi (in Kii province) and Yoshino (Yamato
province), about 10 miles from the coast. He states that the forests in which it occurs are small in area and very inaccessible.
2 Tokyo Bot. Mag. xix. 45 (1905).
3 Mitt. Deut. Dendr. Gesell. 1902, p. 53, and 1906, pp. 84 and 144. Mayr, in Fremdlind. Wald- u. Parkbdume, 406 (1906), states that seeds of the Japanese species have never germinated in Europe. The young plants, however, referred to above, are unquestionably this species.
4 While the above was passing through the press, Mr. H. Clinton Baker writes that he had just received from Pallanza four plants of P. japonica, about 2 feet high, which are being planted at Bayfordbury. The buds on these plants are about 1⁄4 inch long, shining brown, and without resin ; and the leaves are nearly all bifid at the apex.