CONIFERS 



93 



ground into flour and baked by the Indians, who use the thin strips of fibrous bark 

 in making saddles, breechcloths, and sleeping-mats. 



Distribution. Along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains from the divide 

 between the Platte and Arkansas rivers in Colorado to western Texas, spreading 

 over the Colorado plateau, over the mountain ranges of Nevada, southern New 

 Mexico and Arizona, and southward into northern Mexico; often covering, with the 

 Nut Pine, in southern Colorado and Utah, and in northern and central New Mexico 

 and Arizona, great areas of rolling hills 6O00-700O above the sea-level; reaching 

 its largest size in northern Arizona. 



8. Juniperus sabinoides, Nees. Cedar. Rock Cedar. 



Leaves in pairs, thickened and keeled on the back, obtuse or acute at the apex, 

 mostly without glands, rather more than -^q' long, dark blue-green; on vigorous 

 young shoots and seedling plants lanceolate, long-pointed, rigid, i -^' long. Flowers : 

 staminate with 12-18 stamens, their connectives ovate, obtuse, or slightly cuspidate; 

 scales of the pistillate flower ovate, acute, and spreading, very conspicuous when the 

 fruit is half grown, becoming obliterated at its maturity. Fruit subglobose, \'-^' in 

 diameter, dark blue, with a thin epidermis covered with a glaucous bloom, sweet 

 resinous flesh, and 1 or rarely 2 seeds; seeds broadly ovate, acute, slightly or 



Fic, 83 



conspicuously ridged, rarely tuberculate, nearly 1' long and 1' thick, with a small 

 hilum, a thin outer seed-coat, a membranaceous dark brown inner coat, and 2 coty- 

 ledons. 



A tree, occasionally 100 but generally not more than 20-30 high, with a short 

 or elongated slightly lobed trunk seldom exceeding a foot in diameter, small spread- 

 ing branches forming a wide round-topped open and irregular or a narrow pyramidal 

 head, slender sharply 4-angled branchlets becoming terete after the falling of the 

 leaves, light reddish brown or ashy gray, with smooth or slightly scaly bark; often a 

 shrub, with numerous spreading stems. Bark on young stems and on the branches 

 gray tinged with red, covered with a network of flat plates, scaly on the surface and 

 separated on the margins into thin pale shreds, becoming on old trees \'-^' thick, 

 brown tinged with red, and divided into long narrow slightly attached scales per- 

 sistent for many years and clothing the trunk with a loose thatch-like covering. 



