Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu/407

Rh

A small tree, attaining 40 or 50 feet in height, with bark peeling off in old trees like that of a birch. Young shoots minutely pubescent. Leaflets (Plate 125, fig. 6) seven to eleven, opposite or rarely sub-opposite, the terminal one articulate, the lateral ones on short, stout pubescent petiolules; 2 to 3 inches long; deltoid, ovate or oval; base truncate or rounded; apex obtuse or acute; entire; upper surface dark green and minutely pubescent; lower surface pale green, densely appressed pubescent; rachis pubescent, swollen at the base.

Flowers greenish white, on long pedicels, in simple or occasionally branched erect terminal dense racemes. Calyx teeth four, short, broad, unequal. Petalclaws long, slender; standard obovate, emarginate; wings oblong, obtuse, twoauricled at the base; keel petals partially coalesced, one-auricled. Stamens slightly connate below. Pod, 2 to 3 inches long, oblong, flattened, brown, slightly appressed pubescent; seeds, one to five, oblong.

In specimens from the Asiatic continent the leaflets are larger and much less pubescent than in the Japanese tree, which has been distinguished by Maximowicz as var. Buergeri, and is characterised by very dense appressed pubescence on the lower surface of the leaflets and white tomentose shoots.

In winter the twigs (Plate 126, fig. 5) are shining, glabrous; leaf-scars on prominent pulvini, semicircular, marked by a central large tubercular bundle-scar and two minute dots close to the upper margin; true terminal bud absent, the top of the branchlet having fallen off in early summer and leaving a short stump at the apex of the twig. Buds solitary, dark brown, shining, pubescent towards the apex, showing two scales visible externally.

Cladrastis amurensis occurs in Amurland as far north as lat. 52° 20', and grows throughout Eastern Manchuria and Korea, the largest tree seen by Maack being only 35 feet high and 1 foot in diameter. According to Shirasawa, it is met with in Japan on moist rich soils in the temperate parts, ascending to 4300 feet in the central chain of the main island, and attaining a height of 50 feet and a diameter of 28 inches. It was collected by Elwes in the forest near Asahigawa in central Hokkaido, where, however, it was not abundant or conspicuous. It is called Inu-enju in Japan.

Cladrastis amurensis was introduced from the Amur in 1864 by Maximowicz; and has been spread throughout Europe by the St. Petersburg Botanical Garden. It probably came into England about 1870.