caudate-acuminate; margin repand, minutely ciliate, distantly and minutely serrate or with occasional short teeth; nerves, fifteen to eighteen pairs, usually dividing and forming loops close to the margin; upper surface dark green, glabrous; lower surface pale green, glabrescent.
Flowers fragrant, in pubescent terminal panicles, which are a foot or more in length; pedicels short. Calyx with five short, rounded, ciliate lobes. Petals five, white, oblong, sub-cordate at the base, converging at the apex. Stamens five, alternating with five staminodes. Fruit about. an inch long; valves, opening longitudinally from above downwards. Seed with an oblong wing attached to its upper side, the wing two to three times as long as the body of the seed.
In summer the large pinnate leaves give the tree much the appearance of Ailanthus; but the bark is different, and the leaflets of Cedrela are devoid of the glandular teeth near the base, which are so characteristic of Ailanthus. In winter the following characters are available (Plate 126, fig. 2):—
Twigs stout, brown, minutely pubescent; lenticels small, scattered; pith white, circular in section. Leaf-scars large, alternate, slightly raised, obcordate or oval, with five bundle-dots. Terminal bud, much larger than the others, broadly conical, of four to six triangular scales, which are swollen externally and hollowed internally, brown, shining, with acuminate pubescent tips. Lateral buds minute, solitary, inserted immediately above the leaf-scars, hemispherical, showing three to five shining brown scales.
Lubbock,[1] who gives a detailed account of the structure and development of the buds, the scales of which are modified leaves, states that the terminal bud usually dies in winter, but sometimes lives, and then is always later in developing in spring than the lateral buds.
Cedrela sinensis is a native of northern and western China. It is very common in the neighbourhood of Peking, and was found in Kansuh, beyond the Great Wall, by Piasetski. According to von Rosthorn and Wilson, it is wild in the forests of the province of Szechuan. It is commonly cultivated in central China, where it never attains a great size, mainly because the Chinese spoil its growth by lopping off in spring the young shoots, which are much esteemed as food. These are eaten after being chopped and fried in oil, The tree is known to the Chinese as the hsiangch'un.[2] The timber is good, reddish in colour, and often used in making furniture.
The tree was first made known to Europeans by Pére d'Incarville, who sent dried specimens from Peking to Paris in 1743. In China it has been well known from classical times, and references to it Occur in the earliest Chinese literature.
Cedrela sinensis was introduced in 1862 by Simon, who sent a living plant from Peking to the Museum at Paris, which was described by Carrière in 1865 as Ailanthus flavescens. On the tree flowering in 1875 it was recognised to be Cedrela sinensis. This tree, which was planted in the nursery attached to the garden of the Museum, had attained in 1891 a height of 40 feet; and, when Elwes saw it in 1905, it was very little taller, and about 4 feet in girth, Many trees have been raised in the vicinity of Paris, both by seed and by root-
