| OCR Text |
Show 222 DARWINIAN A. or two mostly very similar species in California and Oregon. . Our May-flower (Epigrea) and o:nr creepmg sn~w-berry, otherwise peculiar to Atlantic North Amenca, recur in Japan. - Our blue cohosh (Caulophyllum) is confined to the ds of the Atlantic States, but has lately been dis-wcoovoe red in Japan. A- peculiar relative of I. t, DI' p h y1 - leia, confined to the higher Alleghanies, is .also repeated in Japan, with a slight difference.' so that It may bar~ly be distinguished as another species. Another relat~ ve is our twin-leaf (Jeffersonia) of the Alleghany regwn alone: a second species has lately turned up in Mantchooria. A relative of this is Podophyllum, our mandrake a common inhabitant of the Atlantic United State~, but found nowhere else. There is one other species of it and that is in the l{imalayas. Here are four most ~eculiar genera of one family, each of a single species in the Atlantic United States, w~ich a:e duplicated on the other side of. the ~orld, mther m identical or almost identical species, or man analogous species, while nothing else of the kind is known in any other part of the world. . I ought not to omit ginseng, the root s~ pnzed by the Chinese, which they obtaiued from thmr northern · provinces and Mantchooria, and which is now known to inhabit Corea and Northern Japan. The Jesuit Fathers identified the plant in Canada and the Atlantic States brought over the Chinese name by which we know it ~nd established the trade in it, which was for many y~ars most profitable. The exportation of ginseng to China probably has not yet entirely ceased. SEQUOIA AND ITS HISTORY. 223 Whether the Asiatic and the Atlantic American ginsengs are to be regarded as of the same species or not is somewhat uncertain, but they are hardly .if at all distinguishable. ' ' There is a shrub, Elliottia, which is so rare and local that it is known only at two stations on the Savannah River in Georgia. It is of peculiar structure and was without near relative until one was lately discovered i~ J a~an (Tripetaleia ), so like it as hardly to be distmgmshable except by having the parts of the blossom in threes instead of fours-a difference not uncommon in the same genus, or even in the same species. Suppose Elliottia had happened to be collected only once, a good while ago, and all know ledge of the- limited and obscure locality were lost; and meanwhile the Japanese form came to oe known. Such a case would ~e parallel with an actual one. A specimen of a peculiar plant (Shortia galacifolia) was detected in the herbarium of the elder Michaux, who collected it (as his autograph ticket shows) somewhere in the high Alleghany Mountains, more than eighty years ago. · No one has seen the living plant since or knows where to find it, if haply it still flourishes in some secluded spot. At length it is found in Japan; and I had the satisfaction of making the identification. 1 A relative is also known in Japan; and a less near one has just been detected in Thibet. Wliether the Japanese and the Alleghanian plants are exactly the same or not, it needs complete specimens of the two to settle. So far as we know, they I .American Journal of Scienc~, 1867, p. 402; "Proceedings of .American .Academy," vol. viii., p. 244. |
