Page:TheTreesOfGreatBritainAndIreland vol03B.djvu/144

530 pairs, impressed above; petiole, 3 inch long, with scattered long hairs; stipules caducous. Fruit: strobiles, 3 to 6 inches long, long-stalked ; bracts densely imbricated, membranous, 1 to 1% inch long, irregularly serrate ; the inner margin furnished below with an orbicular lobe, infolding and concealing the nutlet ; the outer margin slightly inflected at the base. The basal lobe is much larger than in C. zaponzca, and is united to the bract, not only by its base, but also along one side.

Var. chinensis, Franchet, Journ. de Bot. 1899, p. 202.—Leaves, ovate-oblong, 3 inches long by 12 inch broad, with eighteen to twenty pairs of nerves, slightly cordate and unequal at the base, shortly acuminate at the apex. This variety strongly resembles in the shape of the leaf certain forms of C. japonica, but has the fruit of C. cordata. It seems to be intermediate between the two species, and is found in the mountains of Eastern Szechwan in China. It was introduced into cultivation by Mr. E.H. Wilson in 1901, and young plants are growing in the Coombe Wood Nursery.

According to Sargent, Carpinus cordata is one of the largest and perhaps the most beautiful of the hornbeams. It grows on the main island of Japan only at high altitudes, its true home being in the deciduous-leaved forest of central and northern Yezo. It is also a native of Korea and Manchuria; and occurs in China, in the typical form, in the province of Shensi,’ the variety chinensis growing more to the south.

This species was introduced from Japan by Maries in 1879, and produced fruit in 1886 in the Coombe Wood Nursery, where the largest specimen now living is only 15 feet in height. A tree at Tortworth is about 20 feet, and has borne fruit, from which, however, Elwes did not succeed in raising seedlings. There is also a small tree at Grayswood, Haslemere. It seems to be very rare in cultivation, and there are no specimens growing in the Hornbeam Collection at Kew.

A tree, attaining in Japan 50 feet in height and 5 feet in girth; bark smooth, grey, sometimes almost white in colour. Young branchlets with scattered long hairs. Leaves (Plate 201, Fig. 8), 2½ inches long by 1½ inch broad, ovate or ovate-elliptical, contracted above into a long acuminate apex, rounded or slightly cuneate at the base; margin, bi-serrate, non-ciliate; upper surface with scattered long appressed hairs ; lower surface with long appressed hairs on the midrib and nerves, glabrous between the nerves; nerves thirteen to fifteen pairs ; petiole, ½ inch long, pilose;

1 Burkill, doc. cit.