Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu/396

442 Dr. Masters in the Gardeners' Chronicle, but I have been unable to procure particulars of the tree from which the specimens were obtained.

In the Botanic Garden, Cambridge, there is an old tree which was 58 feet high in 1903, with eight stems, girthing from 3 feet to 4 feet 3 inches; and from the roots of another tree which was blown down about 1885 a number of strong stems, about twenty, have sprung up, which average about 50 feet in height and 24 feet in girth. These particulars, which have been kindly sent me by Mr. Lynch, the curator, show the remarkable power of the tree in producing root-suckers (Plate 123).

A tree at Fota, near Queenstown in Ireland, seen by Henry in 1903, measured 42 feet high by 3 feet 9 inches in girth. It produced flowers and fruit in 1902.

Dr. Masters recommends it for planting in towns, and says that there was a good specimen in the Chelsea Botanic Garden (since cut down) in 1891. There are said to be good specimens in some of the towns in Holland.

A tree attaining, according to Shirasawa, 100 feet in height, with a straight stem Io feet in girth. Bark greyish brown with deep longitudinal fissures. Shoots glabrous. Leaves (Plate 125, fig. 3) 8 to 16 inches long, on a stalk about 2 inches long, which is swollen at its insertion; rachis without wings. Leaflets, fifteen to twenty-one, usually opposite, sessile or sub-sessile, 2½ to 5 inches long, oblonglanceolate, acuminate at the apex, unequal at the base, which is rounded or somewhat narrowed; dark green above; under surface lighter green, with glandular scales, and some tomentum on the midrib and nerves and in their axils; somewhat thicker in texture than the leaves of P. caucasica; margin sharply and finely serrate.

Flowers appearing with the leaves. Staminate catkins two to three at the base of the young shoots; scale three-lobed, pubescent, bearing nine to twelve short-stalked stamens. Pistillate catkins, solitary, terminal at the end of the young shoot, later apparently lateral owing to the growth of the upper axillary bud. Fruiting catkins, 8 to 10 inches long; fruit an inch across; nut with a short, scarcely beaked apex; wings rhombic, broader than long, without any hollow at their base, inconspicuously veined.

The above description applies to the glabrous form, which is in cultivation in England and is common in Japan. In wild specimens from Yezo the leaves appear to be much more pubescent, the rachis and nerves being often covered with dense long hairs.