JAPANESE FLORICULTURE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1750, 29 September 1879, Page 3

JAPANESE FLORICULTURE.

Japanese floriculture is famed for its success and quaintness, and American flower lovers are now making collections of Japanese plants. A gentleman in San Francisco owns 200 of these plants, all evergreens, which curiously illustrate native skill, the trees being dwarfed and trained into various shapes, such as those of cats, dogs, cranes, turtles, sparrows, &c., the favourite design being a cocked hat. Pome of the trees, though dwarfed to only a foot high, retain their natural shape, and look like full grown trees seen through the reversed end of an opera glass, while many are over fifty years of age, Most curious, however, are the two tea plants, the leaves of which sell at from five to ten dollars per pound in Japan, grasses growing in long cords with tassels, and houses, pleasure boats and junks, made out of some porous root in which plants can live. The latter are covered with little plants so dwarfed as never to grow out of proportion to the object which forms their base. Some of these floral curiosities are very old. having been handed down from father to son for many generations, while they grow in valuable specimens of ancient Japanese pottery.