Farther north, according to Maximowicz,[1] it extends throughout the territory of the lower Amur and the coast province facing the Sea of Ochotsk, reaching its northern limit in the interior in the Stanovoi mountains about latitude 55° 50', and on the coast at Ajan, lat. 56° 27'. Schmidt[2] says that thick forests of Picea ajanensis occur in the lower Amur and in the coast territory. A mountain at 1000 feet in the Amgun valley was clothed with a thick mossy wood of this spruce, in the shadow of which snow still lay on the 30th May. On the crest of the Bureja range it occurs as a low prostrate shrub. It descends very seldom to the river banks. Middendorff also notes that it is confined to the hills on the coast of the Sea of Ochotsk. Occasionally it grows on swampy flats in Amurland.
Schmidt describes the bark as being moderately rough and divided into generally 6-angled plates, about an inch in diameter and ½ to 1 line in thickness; and that the form and colour of the leaves are very variable, their points being either acute or obtuse.
In the island of Saghalien, in its south-western part, there is a coniferous forest composed of Picea ajanensis and Abies sachalinensis, which clothes the slopes of the mountains up to 800 feet on the coast, and higher in the interior, where even the lofty crests are covered with dark forests of these two species.
In the Kurile Isles[3] this species is confined to the three islands north of Yezo, namely Kunashiri, Shikotan, and Etorofu, reaching its northern limit in the last named. In Shikotan it forms with Abies sachalinensis a dense mixed forest, which in habit and height and cover of the ground strikingly resembles the coniferous forests at moderate elevations in Germany. The cones borne by the tree in this island are, however, small in size, and the tree itself does not attain its maximum dimensions.
In Yezo, Mayr reports that he has seen trees 130 feet in height, and considers reliable the reports of the Japanese foresters that it occasionally attains even 160-200 feet. It occurs in all the mountains of Yezo, only reaching the coast in the west of the island, where it is found in cold, marshy localities immediately behind the dunes, being only separated from the sea by a growth of Rosa rugosa and shrubby Quercus dentata. The important forests of it lie in the western and central mountains of Yezo, and also in the high ranges of Kitami, Kushiro, and Nemoro, where it forms mixed woods with the Saghalien silver fir and Picea Glehnii.
Introduction
We do not know that any plants of the continental Ajan spruce have been grown in Europe.
John Gould Veitch visited Hakodate in 1860, and sent home specimens and seeds of a weakly form of the Yezo Picea ajanensis, which was described by Lindley[4] as a
- ↑ Maximowicz, Primitiæ Floræ Amurensis, 261, 392 (1859). See also Regel, Tentamen Floræ Ussuriensis, 136 (1861).
- ↑ Schmidt, "Reisen in Amurland und Saghalien," in Mém. Acad. Imp. Sc. St. Petersburg, VII. series, xii. No. 2, pp. 15, 20, 63, 98 (1868).
- ↑ Mayr, loc. cit. p. 102.
- ↑ Gard. Chron. 1861, p. 22. This is Picea ajanensis, var. microsperma, Masters, Gard. Chron. 1880, i. 115.
