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Abstract

Although it is well known that the visit of American “Black Ships” to Japan under the command of the Commodore Perry in 1857 resulted in the termination of her seclusion for some two decades, the fact that the plant gathering in Japan was included in the purposes of this exploration has hardly been known outside systematic botanical communities. The Black Ships under the name of the United States North Pacific Exploring Expedition made plant collecting twice in Japan, and the plant specimens made during these expeditions are now housed in the herbaria of the Harvard University, The New York Botanical Garden, the United States National Herbarium (Smithsonian Institution) and a few other institutions.

The first botanizing attempt was made in 1853 at Uraga (Kanagawa Pref.), Yokohama, Shimoda (Shizuoka Pref.) and Hakodate (Hokkaido) by Mr. S. Wells Williams and Dr. James Morrow, then officials at the American Consulate at Macao, China, who joined the Commodore Perry's expedition party in Hong Kong. The Japanese collections were brought to Harvard University for study by Dr. Asa Gray, then professor of botany at the university. The collection consisted of 353 specimens, of which 34 species were regarded by Gray as new. Besides the new species, identifying those specimens Gray had reaffirmed his assumption that there was a great similarity between the floras of eastern North America and Japan, the finding which motivated the plant collecting in a much larger scale in the second expedition of Black Ships.

The Table 1 shows the sailing routes and dates of the second expedition of Black Ships under the command of the Commanders Ringgold and Rodgers in 1854 and 1855. Two ships, the U.S.S.Vincennes and the U.S.S.Hancock, were used for plant exploration, and Dr. Charles Wright and his field assistant, Mr. James Small, on board Vincennes and Hancock respectively, botanized in the Ryukyu Archipelago (Okinawa, Amami Oshima Is., Kikaigashima Is., Tanegashima Is. and the Pescadores), Kagoshima Bay of Kyushu, Shimoda of the Main Island and Hakodate of Hokkaido. The collection of this second expedition is not only much bigger in the number of specimens than in the first collection but also covers more places of Japan from subtropical Ryukyu Archipelago to subarctic northernmost part of Hokkaido. Gray's studies on these rich collections have resulted in the monumental opus (Gray 1859), which discussed for the first time about the peculiar floristic link between the temperate North America and eastern Asia, enumerating some 580 taxa showing such phytogeographic disjunct distribution (see the next chapter of this report for these details).

In addition to the first and the main set of these Japanese collections an excellent duplicate set of the collection is kept in the herbarium of The New York Botanical Garden as mentioned above. I suspect that this New York set might possibly be the second set of the collection because of the close academic relationship between Prof. Asa Gray and Dr. John Torrey (associated with The New York Botanical Garden at that time). As a matter of fact, I see that the New York sheets are often more complete and in much better condition than the corresponding Harvard sheets. I have updated the determinations of these collections based mainly on the New York sheets in frequent consultation with the master sheets as is seen in the annotated catalogue of these specimens in the following chapter of this report.

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