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Volume 47 Number 2 Spring 1987 Arnoldia (ISSN 0004-2633; USPS 866-100) is Page published quarterly, in winter, spring, summer, and 2 Eight Views of Nippon fall, the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. by Robert G. Nicholson Subscriptions are $12.00 per calendar year domestic, $15.00 per calendar year foreign, payable in advance. Single copies are $3.50. All remittances must be in U. S. dollars, by check drawn on a U. S. bank or by international money order. Send subscription orders, remittances, change-of- address notices, and all other subscription-related communications to: Helen G. Shea, Circulation Manager, Arnoldia, The Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130-2795. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Arnoldia The Arnold Arboretum Jamaica Plain, MA 02130-2795. Copyright © 1987, The President and Fellows of Harvard College. 16 Native Plants: The Possibilities Edmund A. Editor Cultivating Schofield, Susan Storer Peter Del Tredici, Associate Editor Helen G. Shea, Circulation Manager Marion D. Cahan, Editorial Assistant (Volunteer) Arnoldia is printed by the Office of the University Publisher, Harvard University. Front cover: Arisxma sikokianum, a Japanese rela- tive of the jack-in-the-pulpit of North America. Photo- graphed in the garden of H. Lincoln Foster in May 1979 by Jennifer H. Hicks. Courtesy of the photographer. (See page 2.) Opposite: The large- flowering, or showy, trillium /Trillium grandiflorum) in flower at the Garden in the Woods, Framingham, Massachusetts. During April and May, twenty-two kinds of trilliums bloom along trails in the Garden. Photograph by John A. Lynch. Courtesy, the New England Wild Flower Society. (See page 16.) This page: Robert Nicholson collects seeds on Mount 20 Cultivating Native Plants: The Legal Asahi during his recent trip to Japan (top) and David Pitfalls Longland works in the meadow garden at the Gar- Linda R. McMahan den in the Woods, Framingham, Massachusetts. Pho- tographed by Robert G. Nicholson and John A. Lynch, respectively. (See pages 2 and 16.) Inside 25 Native-Plant Societies in the United States back cover: Professor Kingo Miyabe, professor of botany at the Agricultural College, Sapporo, Japan. Photographed by Ernest H. Wilson in June 1914. 27 Hardy Aroids in the Garden From the Archives of the Arnold Arboretum. Back Judy Glattstein cover: Lysichiton americanum flowering in the New York Botanical Garden. Photographed by Judy Glatt- stein. Courtesy of the photographer. (See page 27.) 35 BOOKS II Eight Views of Nippon Robert G. Nicholson Visiting ancient gardens in Tokyo and mountaintops on Hokkaido and Honshu, temple gardens and national parks, and far-northern islets, a botanical pilgrim finds the whole of Japan to be one vast "green Mecca" To travel in a country as botanically rich and Arnold Arboretum. Although I undertook the as horticulturally storied as Japan was a goal trip primarily to collect woody plants, Gary I had carried for years. Now, after my recent Koller, the Arboretum’s managing horticul- first visit to that green Mecca, I realize what turist, did draw up a list of targeted rare an open-ended ambition it was, for I could species for me before I left. never have found all of the native species I During the course of the three weeks, I sought or visited all the gardens worth seeing collected from eighteen sites, about half of during my three-week stay in Japan. them mountains in the range of six thousand Of all the world’s countries, Great Britain to nine thousand feet (approximately 1,800 to ;>: and Japan have attained the greatest promi- 2,750 m). I visited three of the four main nence in horticulture. Their peoples nurture islands of Japan and, between bursts of col- a deep love of plants, and neither will tolerate lecting, visited some of the fabled gardens an excuse not to garden. After all, one can created during the fifteen hundred years of always garden in a window box or single pot, Japanese landscaping. as city dwellers of both countries often do. After landing at Tokyo’s Narita Airport, I Great Britain presents the "garden needed to spend a day or two in Tokyo adjust- crawler" with the dilemma of choice, for ing to the ten-hour difference in time. Tokyo, there are scores of first-rate botanic gardens, formerly called Edo, is the present capital of parks, and cottage gardens to decide among. A Japan but was not a city of importance until visitor to Japan faces a similar problem, but 1863, when it became the new capital. It does has a compounding problem as well: com- have some fine gardens but none with the pared to Britain or even the eastern United long and time-worn elegance of those in Nara, States, Japan has a staggeringly diverse native Japan’s first capital, or of those in Kyoto, long flora, one that still contributes new and un- the seat of Japanese culture. tried plants to horticulture, ranging from al- Even though my visit did not come at the pines to tropicals, a flora that makes Japan best time for viewing gardens, a number of one of the greatest "natural gardens" on gardens were recommended to me. One in earth. particular-Rikugi-en-stood out. In September of 1986, I had the good for- tune of going to Japan, to collect plants for the I: Rikugi-en, the Garden of Poetry Rikugi-en is literally called the Garden of the six classifica- Opposite: A yukimi lantern in the Rikugi-en Garden, Poetry, Rikugi signifying Tokyo. All photographs accompanying this article were tions of poetry in Japan and China. Com- taken by the author. pleted in 1702, the garden was designed by 4 Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, a minister of the nated this fine garden to the City of Tokyo. Shogun. It is a prime example of a circuit In addition to its outstanding plant materi- garden, with a main path following the con- al, such as huge specimens of Ginkgo biloba tours of a large central lake, one that is dotted and Acer buergeranum, the garden features a with islands of cloud-pruned black pine. number of quintessentially Japanese charac- From this main path a number of smaller ters. Stone lanterns dot the garden, both the paths wind into the patches of woods on the tall Taima-ji style and the more-squat, four- edges of the garden, often surprising with legged Yukimi type. A bridge, made of large, specimen plants or dappled views back to- ten-foot slabs of stone take one over a pool ward the central waters. filled with vividly mottled koi and large One outstanding specimen was a large, painted turtles, both creatures well settled fifteen-foot (4.5-m) plant of Enkianthus peru- into their role as the park’s beggars. latus, usually seen only as a shrub in the What distinguishes the garden is its metic- United States. The garden originated as a ulous upkeep and its balanced interplay be- feudal estate, but in the 1870s it came to the tween the shadowy woods and the bright hands of a member of the rising financial expanses of clipped lawn. These lawns are aristocracy, a Baron Iwasaki. He respectfully actually a recent feature in Japanese landscap- restored the garden to its original drawing and ing, having been borrowed from the West descriptions. In 1938 the Iwasaki clan do- only in the last century or so. Upon the bright- green lawns are positioned tightly pruned, mounded plants of the dark-green Japanese black pine, Pinus thunbergiana. From across the pond, these pines look like large stones, or even islands on a calm sea of green. II: Daisetsuzan National Park Given that I would be a month in Japan, I felt it best to start collecting in the North, where seeds would ripen early, and to work south- ward during my stay. The first collecting was to be on Hokkaido, the northernmost big island, in the Daisetsuzan National Park. Before collecting, I made a short, helpful visit to the Sapporo Botanical Garden, long an ally of the Arnold Arboretum. In Sapporo, I was shown a row of massive red oaks lining a city street. Beneath one of the oaks was a sign stating that the trees had been started from seed sent to Japan by the ArnoldArboretum in the late 1800s! Since it was the Garden’s cen- tennial year, I presented its director, Tatsu- ichi Tsujii, with gifts from the Arnold Arbo- retum-a Magnolia virginiana grown from native Massachusetts seed and a photograph Cobblestone path in the Rikugi-en Garden, Tokyo. of Kingo Miyabe, the Garden’s first director, 5 which E. H. Wilson had taken during his stay fifty-nine hundred feet (1,800 m), the soils in 1917. thereafter being affected by sulfurous steam Dr. Tsujii had arranged for seed-collecting from an active band of fumaroles. permits for me, and within a day I was on the Looking back down from this height, I saw flanks of Mount Asahi, at sixty-two hundred that the ponds looked like chips of mirror set feet (2,290 m) Hokkaido’s highest mountain. into a clipped carpet of low, green plants, each Mount Asahi has an excellent alpine zone species contributing its own unique texture. that can be reached by cable car, so I began A mile-long trail connected the upper ter- collecting in the alpine zone and walked my minus of the cable car to the beckoning hot- way down. At fifty-three hundred feet ( 1,620 spring spas below. As if to further my appre- m) was a series of small alpine ponds around ciation of this custom, a drenching rainstorm which grew Geum pentapetalum, Empetrum took its cue, turning the path into a stream- nigrum var.