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132, The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland
the island of Chusan, off the coast of Chekiang. His specimens, three in number, are
preserved in the British Museum, and a branch with cones was figured both by
Petiver J and Plukenet. 2 A few years previously, probably in 1692, it had been found
in Japan by Kaempfer,3 whose specimen also is kept in the British Museum ; and
Thunberg 4 obtained specimens in Japan, the material on which Don founded his
description of the genus. It was collected in China at different times by Sonnerat, 6
Millett,6 and Sir Everard Home ; 7 but we owe to Fortune the only account of
importance of the tree in the wild state in China.
Fortune 8 saw the tree for the first time in the plain of Shanghai in 1843, where
it is planted in cemeteries and temple-grounds, and grows to a great size, the poles
which are set up in front of temples and mandarins' offices being often of Cryptomeria.
In 1844 he found it growing wild in the mountains south-west of Ningpo, where it
forms dense woods with Cunninghamia and other trees. It is met with in the
Chekiang mountains even at high elevations the finest specimens seen by Fortune
occurring in the Bohea hills, which he crossed in 1849. He was particularly
struck with a fine solitary tree, at least 1 20 feet in height, which stood near the gate
in the pass of the high range which separates the Chekiang and the Fukien provinces.
At Ningpo the junks are mostly built of the timber of this tree.
Cryptomeria was also collected by Swinhoe 9 in the country inland from Amoy,
and by Pere David in the interior of Fukien, where, he says, 10 it is a beautiful tree,
becoming rare in the wild state, but existing still in the mountains at moderate
elevations.
Specimens u have been collected in other parts of China, but always, I believe,
from planted trees. In Yunnan I only met with two trees, one (18 feet in girth)
near a temple, and the other near a village. Cryptomeria apparently only occurs wild
in China in the mountains of the Chekiang and Fokien provinces, between 25 and
29 N. lat., but may be found elsewhere when the interior of the country is better
explored. In its native home in China the tree is subject to severe cold in winter,
but the spring arrives suddenly with no late frosts, and the summer is much warmer
than in England. In China the tree is called kuan-yin-sha ("goddess of mercy fir")
in Yunnan, kung-cKio-sung ( " peacock-pine") in Szechuan, and sha ("fir") simply in
Chekiang, where it shares the name with Cunninghamia, the timber of both trees
being much used in the construction of houses and boats.
CRYPTOMERIA IN JAPAN
Both from an ornamental and economic point of view this is the most important
1 Petiver, Gazophylacium Natures et Artis ( 1702), tab. 6, fig. 3, " Cupressus chusancnsis, AHetis folio, from Chusan";
and Phil. Trans. xxiii. (1703), p. 1421, No. 70.
2 Plukenet, Amaltheum Botanicum ( 1705), text 69, tab. 386, fig. 3.
3 Amanitates Exotica ( 1722) p. 883. Kaempfer's figure is published in Icon. Kaempf. (1791), t. 48.
4 Flora Japonica, 2 65 (1784). 6 In 1776. Lamarck, Ency. Bot. ii. 244.
6 Collected at Macao, where the tree is only planted. Hook, Ic. Plant, vii. t. 668 (1844).
7 Sir Everard Home collected specimens (British Museum and Kew) in Chusan and near Woosung, and his notes say
"from trees near tombs and joss-houses."
8 Fortune, Residence among the Chinese ( 1857), pp. 145, 184, 189, 256, 277, 412.
9 Specimen at Kew. 10 piantce Davidiana:, \. 291 (1884).
11 By Anderson, near Momien in Yunnan, and by Dr. Faber, on Mount Omei in Szechuan.
Cryptomeria
tree of Japan, as it is also the largest, and though it is now difficult to say how far its
natural distribution extends, it has been planted everywhere from such a remote
period, and grows so rapidly that it is now the most conspicuous tree in all those parts
of Japan which I visited except in the island of Hokkaido. 1
I saw it wild in the primeval forests which cover the mountains on the frontier
of the provinces of Akita and Aomori in the extreme north, near a station called
Jimba, at an elevation of about 1000 feet, where the lower edge of the forests and
more accessible valleys have already been denuded of their best timber. The
Japanese Government have lately made a good road up one of the valleys, which
enabled me to see the forest at its best under the guidance of their obliging foresters.
The hills are here very steep, often with a slope of 30 to 40 , and covered on the
north-east aspects with an almost pure growth of Cryptomeria, and though on the
south-west aspects a few deciduous trees, such as maple, magnolia, oak, chestnut, and
yEsculus were mixed with it, I saw no other conifer. This forest is not truly virgin,
because from time to time trees have been cut for shingles and tub staves, which
are made in the forest and carried out on men's backs as usual in the remoter parts
of Japan. But in many places it was quite dense, and the undergrowth consisted
largely of ferns, Aucuba, Skimmia, Hydrangea, and a variety of other shrubs, and
tall, rank-growing herbaceous plants such as Spiraea and Rodgersia podophylla.
The trees average in size 100 to no feet high by 2 to 3 feet in diameter, and are
clean for half their length or more, in the denser parts of the forest. The largest trees
which have been felled here do not exceed about 100 feet in timber length and about
4 feet diameter. The rings of one of 5 feet in girth which I measured showed 116
years' growth, of which about 87 were red heart-wood. Another close by was very
flat-sided, measuring 3 feet 9 inches in diameter one way, and only 2 feet 9 inches
the other, the centre on that side being only i foot from the nearest point of the bark.
This tree was about 136 years old, over 100 years growth being red heart-wood.
Many trees were more or less curved at the butt, and many others forked low
down into two, three, or more stems. There were plenty of cones on the trees which
had sufficient light, but a careful search did not discover a single self-sown seedling,
all the young trees which were coming up and those not numerous being evidently
suckers or growths from the stool. The dense layer of coarse, sour humus and half-
decayed leaves and branches form a bed in which the seedling after germination
cannot take root, but on the railway banks and other exposed surfaces not overgrown
by dense grass young seedlings appeared and grew freely. Many of these trees had
large climbers, such as Vitis Coignetiae, Schizophragma, and Wistaria, growing nearly
to their tops. Plate 38, taken from a negative kindly given me by the Japanese
Imperial Forest Department, shows the appearance of this forest. Plate 39 A, from
the same source, shows a mature forest of Cryptomeria in the island of Shikoku.
Plate 39 B shows the trunk of the tree and the manner of felling still adopted in
Japan, cf. p. 137.
The forester told me that the system adopted in this forest, now that it is
1 Mayr quotes Dr. Honda for the fact that the most southern locality where it grows wild is in the island of Yakushima,
the northernmost of the Riu-Kiu islands, where in a dense forest at a high elevation it forms immense trunks.