APPENDIX 

 I 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES ON THE MONTEREY CYPRESS * 



Cupressus macrocarpa Hartweg (Monterey cypress). Littoral tree, 15 to 

 80 feet hiofh with trunk 1 to 3 feet in diameter, the branches spreading 

 and forming a regular conical crown or exceedingly distorted and irreg- 

 ular; ultimate branchlets numerous, fine and subterate, densely clothed 

 with triangular scale-like leaves; leaves | to 1^ inches long^ staminate 

 catkins ovate or subglobose, 1 to 2 lines long, borne at the ends of the 

 ultimate branchlets; ovalate catkins greenish, composed of about 5 pairs of 

 broadly ovate thinnish scales ; cones dull brown, broadly oblong or sub- 

 globose, 1 to If inches long; scales flat-topped, with a central curved thin- 

 edged ridge-like umbo; seeds 1 to 2 lines long, narrowly wing-margined 

 but irregularly shaped from crowding in the cones and with a minute, 

 white, lanceolate attachment scar at base. 



The Monterey cypress inhabits the ocean shore and forms two groves, 

 one at Cypress Point near Monterey and the second at Point Lobos. It is 

 the most restricted in distribution of any California tree and of any 

 coniferous species in the world. The wind-broken and most admired indi- 

 viduals stand in exposed places on the bluffs or cling to the very face of 

 the rocky <3liffs within reach of the flying ocean spray. In such situations 

 they are carved into picturesque and oft-times singular shapes remarkable 

 for the density of the masses of foliage presented towards the ocean and 

 the flattened or board-like character of the supporting trunks. A little back 

 from the shore, where the trees protect each other, they assume regular 

 forms, as regular as those of trees in cultivated plantations. Most of these 

 protected trees have very open crowns and finger-pointed main branches. 



The effect of the wind upon the trees growing in exposed situations is 

 by reason of their moist habitat due less to effect of excessive transpiration 

 than to mechanical strain. One may see two trees standing side by side 

 of equal height and equally exposed, one a young tree with slender, pointed, 

 symmetrically pyramidal crown, the other an old tree, its trunk shorn of 

 branches and rising to a battered but thick flat-topped crown. 



Unsymmetrical trees, whose configuration is due in the main to wind, 

 fall roughly into three types: 



1. Trees possessing much thickened lower branches and irregular crowns. 

 2. Trunks, mainly dismantled of branches, ending above in a flat hat-like 

 crown of compactly woven branchlets. 3. Trees crouching together in small 

 companies and building up to leeward an even, dense- wall of foliage. 



As a result of wind strain on top, or load of one-sided crown, trunks 

 often become heavily buttressed or swollen unsymmetrically at base. Ex- 

 cessively buttressed trees usually stand in the most exposed places. On the 

 other hand, trees standing equally near the shore line exhibit trunks not 

 buttressed. Buttressing is also more or less correlated with root development. 



• An abridged extract from "The Silva of California" — W^illis L. Jepson, Pages 155 to 158. 

 (Berkeley : The University Press, 1910.) 



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