Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol02B.djvu/408

450 It is propagated either by seed or by root-cuttings. At Kew it is rather a shrub than a tree, and produces flowers when quite young, which appear late in the season, in the end of July or the beginning of August. It ripens its fruit in October, the pods remaining on the tree during winter.

The timber, according to Shirasawa, is hard and tenacious, and is used in building and in making furniture. Elwes purchased planks of it at Sapporo, which are of a yellowish-brown colour, and seem to be of good quality for cabinet-making.

A tree attaining 70 feet in height and 10 feet in girth. Young shoots rusty pubescent towards the base. Leaflets nine to eleven, alternate, entire, oblonglanceolate, obtuse or acute at the apex; broad and rounded, rarely cuneate, at the base; lower surface with appressed pubescence most marked towards the base and along the midrib. Leaf-rachis pubescent, with swollen base enclosing two or three buds. Leaf-scars on older shoots, oblique on prominent pulvini, orbicular; the raised circular rim, discontinuous above, surrounding a central densely pubescent depression, in which lie two or three buds, the upper one of which is the largest.

Flowers pinkish-white, fragrant, in large terminal, rusty-pubescent panicles. Calyx rusty-pubescent; teeth short, broad, rounded. Petals long-clawed, erect, free; standard broadly obovate, bifid; wings and keel-petals oblong. Stamens slightly connate at the base; ovary pubescent. Pod linear-oblong, flattened, with thickened margins.

This tree, which resembles Sophora japonica in habit and foliage, was discovered by Pratt, in 1890, in Western Szechuan, where E. H. Wilson subsequently saw large trees at 7000 feet altitude in the Hsiang Ling range, west of Mt. Omei. It also occurs in the high mountains of the Fang district in Hupeh, from whence seeds were sent home by Wilson in 1901. Plants raised at Coombe Wood were, in 1906, 5 feet high, and for so far have proved perfectly hardy. The tree has beautiful flowers, and, growing at high altitudes in western China, should thrive in this country.