Sophora foliis pinnatis: foliolis pluribus ovatis glabris: caule arboreo. Willd. Sp. Pl.
Sophora with winged leaves: the leaflets numerous, ovate, and smooth: stem arborescent.
REFERENCE TO THE PLATE.
1. The empalement.
2. The vexillum.
3. One of the alæ.
4. The carina.
5. The chives.
6. The seed-bud and pointal.
Sophora japonica is the largest species of that genus at present known. The specimen exhibited is from a tree more than 40 feet high, in the collection of John Ord, esq. at Purser’s Cross, Fulham, which was planted by himself about fifty years ago. Our attachment to even the inanimate companions of our youth, and the pleasure we derive from them, are thus beautifully expressed by one of our English poets (Cowley, we believe):
“A wood coëval with himself he sees;
And loves his old cotemporary trees.”
Mr. Ord obtained his plants of Mr. Gordon, nurseryman at Mile End, who introduced the species from China in the year 1753. The first time of its flowering in this country, we learn, was in his Grace the Duke of Northumberland’s collection at Sion, in August 1797. The only figure we have seen is in Jacquin’s Hortus Schœnbrunnensis, vol. iii. Burmann, in his Flora Indica, and after him Linnæus, describe the flowers as white. In Mr. Ord’s garden they are of a faint yellow, as in the figure of Jacquin; and in the specimens which we have seen from Sion House, faint yellow tinged with purple. Excellent in the study of flowers is the maxim of Virgil,
“.... Nimiùm ne crede colori.”
[Pg 67]