CONIFERS 



75 



apex, without glands or obscurely glandular-pitted, about ^' long. Flowers opening 

 in April and May, liver color. Fruit ripening and discharging its seeds iii the early 

 autumn, ^'-^' long; seeds ^' long, the thin wings as wide as the body. 



A tree, 50-60 high, with a short often lobed and buttressed trunk, occasion- 

 ally 6 although usually not more than 2-3 in diameter, often divided into 2 or 

 3 stout secondary stems, short horizontal branches soon turning upward and forming 

 a narrow compact pyramidal head, light yellow-green branchlets paler on the lower 

 surface than on the upper, changing with the death of the leaves during their 

 second season to light cinnamon-red, growing darker the following year, gradually 

 becoming terete and abruptly enlarged at the base and finally covered with smooth 

 lustrous dark orange-brown bark, and marked by conspicuous scars left by the 

 falling of the short pendulous lateral branchlets. Bark \'-\' thick, light red-brown 

 often tinged with orange color and broken by shallow fissures into narrow flat 

 connected ridges separating into elongated more or less persistent scales. "Wood 

 light, soft, brittle, very coarse-grained, durable, fragrant, pale yellow-brown; largely 



used in Canada and the northern states for fence-posts, rails, railway-ties, and shin- 

 gles. Fluid extracts and tinctures made from the young branchlets are sometimes 

 used in medicine. 



Distribution. Frequently forming nearly impenetrable forests on swampy ground 

 or often occupying the rocky banks of streams, from Nova Scotia and Xew Bruns- 

 wick, northwestward to the mouth of the Saskatchewan, and southward throuo-h the 

 northern states to southern New Hampshire, central Massachusetts and New York, 

 northern Pennsylvania, central Michigan, northern Illinois, and central Minnesota, 

 and along the high Alleghany Mountains to southern Virginia and northeastern 

 Tennessee; very common at the north, less abundant and of smaller size southward; 

 on the southern Alleghany Mountains only at high elevations. 



Often cultivated, with many forms produced in nurseries, as an ornamental tree 

 and for hedges ; and in Europe from the middle of the sixteenth century. 



2. Thuya plicata. D. Don. Red Cedar. Canoe Cedar. 



Leaves on leading shoots ovate, long-pointed, often conspicuously glandular on 

 the back, frequently ^ long, on lateral branchlets ovate, apiculate, without glands 



