and neighboring districts are in all degrees of likeness. Sometimes the one
is undistinguishable from the other; sometimes there is a difference of
aspect, but hardly of tangible character; sometimes the two would be termed
marked varieties if they grew naturally in the same forest or in the same
region; sometimes they are what the botanist calls representative species,
the one answering closely to the other, but with some differences regarded
as specific; sometimes the two are merely of the same genus, or not quite
that, but of a single or very few species in each country; in which case the
point which interests us is, that this peculiar limited type should occur
in two antipodal places, and nowhere else.
It would be tedious, and, except to botanists, abstruse, to enumerate
instances; yet the whole strength of the case depends upon the number of
such instances. I propose therefore, if the Association does me the honor
to print this discourse, to append in a note a list of the more remarkable
ones.[V-2] But I would here mention certain cases as specimens.
Our Rhus Toxicodendron, or poison-ivy, is very exactly repeated in Japan,
but is found in no other part of the world, although a species much like it
abounds in California. Our other poisonous Rhus (R. venenata), commonly
called poison-dogwood, is in no way represented in Western America, but has
so close an analogue in Japan that the two were taken for the same by
Thunberg and Linnaeus, who called them both R. vernix.
Our northern fox-grape, Vitis Labrusca, is wholly confined to the Atlantic
States, except that it reappears in Japan and that region.
The original Wistaria is a woody leguminous climber with showy blossoms,
native to the middle Atlantic States; the other species, which we so much
prize in cultivation, W. Sinensis, is from China, as its name denotes, or
perhaps only from Japan, where it is certainly indigenous.
Our yellow-wood (Cladrastis) inhabits a very limited district on the
western slope of the Alleghanies. Its only and very near relative, Maackia,
is confined to Mantchooria.
The Hydrangeas have some species in our Alleghany region: all the rest
belong to the Chino-Japanese region and its continuation westward. The same
may be said of Philadelphus, except that there are one or two mostly very
similar species in California and Oregon.
Our May-flower (Epigaea) and our creeping snowberry, otherwise peculiar to
Atlantic North America, recur in Japan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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