distressing symptoms which ensue; and turners of the wood suffer especially. The active principle resembles the cathartine which occurs in senna leaves. In the botanical garden at Dijon there is a well beneath a Sophora tree, and when its leaves or flowers are about to fall the gardener covers the well, having found by experience that the water acquires laxative properties by the infusion in it of the Sophora leaves or flowers.[1]
The wood, according to Shirasawa (l.c.), differs remarkably in the colour of the heart-wood and sap-wood; the specific gravity is in dry air 0.74. It is tough and durable, though light and coarse grained; and the annular layers are marked by broad bands of open cells. In Japan it is used for the pillars and frames of their wooden houses, but is not of sufficient importance to have been included in the Japanese Forestry exhibit at St. Louis, nor is it mentioned in Goto's Handbook of the Forestry of Japan as a valuable wood.
Introduction
Petiver[2] (1703 or a little earlier) speaks of "Hai-hoa, Chinensibus, flore albo, siliquis gummosis articulatis," evidently the Sophora, and it is probable that the specimen was collected in the island of Chusan by Cunningham in 1700.
Desfontaines,[3] quoting Guerrapain,[4] states that the tree was first raised in Europe from seeds sent by Père d'Incarville (a Jesuit stationed at Peking) in 1747, the first trees being planted at the Petit Trianon by B. de Jussieu. It was unknown to what genus the tree belonged, until it flowered near Paris in 1779. It was introduced in 1753 into England by James Gordon, a celebrated nurseryman at Mile End.[5] Mr. Nicholson obtained from Mr. James Smith, former curator of Kew Gardens, some interesting details concerning the Kew trees. Five plants were early planted at Kew, all of which were still there in 1864, but two no longer exist. One of the three trees remaining is near the rockery; not far off is the famous specimen in chains, while the third tree is in the village at Kew beside the house once occupied by Mr. Alton, the first director of the Kew Gardens. These three trees, according to Mr. Nicholson,[6] are probably as old as any existing elsewhere in England. There is, however, another tree at Kew beyond the Pagoda of which there is no history.
Cultivation
Sophora japonica is an ornamental tree, the peculiarities of which make it interesting. The leaves are dark, glossy green, of an unusual tint, and the younger branchlets are of the same colour. The leaves fall very late in autumn, and keep on
- ↑ Loudon (ii. 564), quoting from Duhamel, states that the bark and green wood of this tree exhales a strong odour which produces on those who prune it a remarkable effect. A plank cut from a tree at Kew in Elwes' possession shows a hard, compact, yellowish brown wood.
- ↑ Petiver, Musei Petiveriani Centuriæ decem rariora Naturæ continens, No. 930 (1692–1703).
- ↑ Desfontaines, Histoire des Arbres, ii. 258 (1809).
- ↑ Guerrapain, Notice sur la culture du Sophora.
- ↑ Hort. Kew, first edition (1789), ii. 45. In Andrews Repository, ix. 585, there is a figure of a specimen from a tree 40 feet high in the collection of John Ord at Purser's Cross, Fulham, which was planted by him forty years before. Ord is stated to have received his plants from Gordon, "who introduced the species from China in 1753." It is also stated that the Sophora first flowered in England at Syon in August 1797. Loudon, however (loc. cit.), states that "the oldest tree near London is at Purser's Cross, where it flowered for the first time in England in August 1807."
- ↑ Nicholson in Woods and Forests (1884), p. 500.
