SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. CONIFER. 
130 
and also, although less commonly, on dry ridges and mountain slopes, which in the interior it sometimes 
ascends to elevations of six thousand feet above the level of the sea. It is distributed from the coast 
region of southern Alaska,’ where it is scattered through the forests of Spruce and Hemlock, southward 
along the coast ranges and islands of British Columbia, through western Washington and Oregon, 
where it is most abundant and grows to its largest size on low lands in the immediate neighborhood of 
the coast associated with the Tide-water Spruce, and through the California coast region, where its 
ordinary companions are the Redwood, the Douglas Fir, and the White Fir, to Mendocino County ; it 
spreads eastward along many of the interior ranges of British Columbia to the western slope of the 
continental divide, which, as a low shrub, it sometimes ascends to elevations of six thousand feet,’ and 
along those of northern Washington and the Coeur d’Aléne, Bitter Root, and Salmon River Mountains 
of Idaho, to the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains of northern Montana, where it rarely descends 
below elevations of five thousand feet. 
The wood of Thuya gigantea is very light, soft, not strong, brittle, rather coarse-grained, easily 
split, and very durable in contact with the soil;* it is dull brown tinged with red, with thin nearly 
white sapwood, and contains thin dark-colored distinct bands of small summer-cells and numerous 
The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.3796, a cubic foot 
It is largely used in Washington and Oregon for the interior finish of 
obscure medullary rays. 
weighing 23.66 pounds. 
buildings, for doors, sashes, fences, and shingles, and in cabinet-making and cooperage. From the trunks 
of this tree the Indians of the northwest coast split the planks used in the construction of their lodges, 
carved the totems which decorated their villages, and hollowed out their great war canoes. From the 
fibres of the inner bark they made ropes, blankets and cloaks, and the thatch for their cabins.* 
Thuya gigantea was discovered by Menzies, the surgeon and naturalist of Vancouver in 1796.° 
It was not described until many years later, when it was found by Douglas on the lower Columbia 
River. Introduced into English gardens about half a century ago, Thuya gigantea® has proved 
hardy in western and central Europe, where it has already attained a large size;’ and occasionally 
cultivated in the middle and northern United States, it survives the winters of eastern Massachusetts. 
The noblest of its race and one of the most valuable timber-trees of northwestern America, Thuya 
gigantea is rapidly disappearing with the spread of forest fires, which, burning through their thin bark, 
soon kill these trees. 
1 Meehan, Proc. Phil. Acad. 1884, 93. — F. Kurtz, Bot. Jahrb. 
xix. 424 (Fl. Chilcatgebietes). 
2 J. M. Dawson, Can. Nat. n. ser. ix. 324. — Macoun, Cat. Can. 
Pl. 460. 
3 The durability of the wood of Thuya gigantea is shown by the 
sound condition of logs which must have lain on the ground for 
more than a century, as other trees sprung from seed deposited 
upon them after they had fallen have in one recorded instance at- 
tained a trunk diameter of from three to four feet ; and near the 
shores of Shoal Water Bay, Washington, submerged by the grad- 
ual sinking of the land, the trunks of Thuya long stood erect as the 
last witnesses to the fact that forests had once covered the spot. 
(See Cooper, Pacific R. R. Rep. xii. pt. ii. 25.) 
4 R. Brown Campst. Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinburgh, ix. 369. 
5 A small compact Thuya, regular in outline, and said to have 
been discovered by Menzies on Vancouver’s Island in 1796, as well 
as several forms raised in gardens, has long been cultivated in 
Europe under the name of Thuya plicata (D. Don, Cat. Hort. Can- 
tab. ed. 6, 249 [1811]. — Lambert, Pinus, ii. 19.— Spach, Hist. 
Vég. xi. 342. — Endlicher, Syn. Conif. 51.— Carriére, Traité Conif. 
102.— Henkel & Hochstetter, Syn. Nadelh. 277. — Gordon, Pine- 
tum, ed. 2, 406. — Parlatore, De Candolle Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 457. — 
Beissner, Handb. Nadelh. 44). ‘There is great uncertainty in regard 
to the true character of the plant originally described by Don, but 
most of the individuals now cultivated under this name are forms 
of Thuya occidentalis, although Thuya gigantea is also occasionally 
cultivated as Thuya plicata. No tree resembling the Thuya plicata 
of gardens has been found in northwestern America, and this plant, 
like most of its varieties, is best considered a garden form referable 
to Thuya occidentalis rather than to Thuya gigantea. 
6 In English gardens Thuya gigantea is frequently cultivated as 
Thuya Lobbii and as Thuya Lobbiana ; and in most European gar- 
dens the names of Thuya gigantea and of Libocedrus decurrens have 
been exchanged through a mistake in identification made by one of 
the early collectors of the seeds of these trees. (See R. Brown 
Campst. Gard. Chron. 1873, 8.) Forms slightly differing in habit 
and in the color of the branchlets are occasionally cultivated in 
European collections. (See Beissner, J. c. 48.) 
7 Fowler, Gard. Chron. 1872, 1527.— Webster, Trans. Scottish 
Arboricultural Soc. xi. 66 (Thuja Lobbii). — R. Hartig, Forst.-Nat. 
Zeit. 1892, 28. 
