38 Japan, Mount Fuji

Mount Fuji towers in the center of Honshu Island, an icon of Japanese culture. Group 38 exhibits its vegetation and is laid out according to the elevation zones on the volcano. The lowest zone, characterized by deciduous oak and beech forests with an exuberant undergrowth, is not actually represented here. There is a kind of dwarf bamboo, Sasa palmata, which adapts well in the understory of these forests. The coniferous forest higher up the volcano is well represented in the arboretum: it consists of Japanese cedar, a common forestry species in Japan, in addition to Momi fir, Nikko fir, Veitch’s silver fir, Alcock’s spruce, Hinoki false cypress and Sawara cypress, Northern and Southern Japanese Hemlock, and Japanese thuja. Japanese larch or karamatsu, is used frequently as an imported exotic in forestry plantations in Europe. It dominates the overstory of this distinguished and charming arboretum group.