322 BRECK'S BOOK OF FLOWERS. 



THE CYPBESS TRIBE. 



" The plants which belong to this section have not their 

 fruit in a true cone, but in a globular or irregular head, consist- 

 ing of a number of scales, sometimes united into a sort of 

 berry. The section includes the Arbor Vitas, the Juniper, the 

 Red and White Cedar, the Cypress and the exotic genus Cal- 

 listris. Most of the section are natives of warmer climates. 

 Those which belong to New England are evergreen, but 

 scarcely resinous. They may be propagated by layers and 

 cuttings, but more readily by seeds, which generally lie in the 

 ground a year. The young plants are to be treated like pines." 



ARBOR VIT.E. 



Cedar Thuya. 



" The name of the genus is derived from a Greek word, sig- 

 nifying to sacrifice; it having been used, from the agreeable odor 

 of the wood, in sacrificial offerings." 



Thuya occidentalis. The American Arbor Vitae. This is 

 a small evergreen tree, growing from thirty to forty, or even 

 fifty, feet in height. It is remarkable for its graceful, pyra- 

 midal, spire-like shape, thickly clothed with branches from the 

 ground to the apex. " The leaves are evergreen, arranged in 

 four rows, in alternately opposite pairs, completely investing 

 and seeming to make up the fan-like branchiets. They are 

 scale-like, marked with a projecting gland below the point, 

 each lower pair embracing and covering the base of the pair 

 above. The branchiets which they cover are arranged in a 

 single plane, as if they were parts of a large, compound, flat, 

 pinnate leaf. These planes are various, inclined to the hori- 

 zon, often vertical, and form the striking peculiarity of this pic- 

 turesque tree." The foliage is of a yellowish-green, and con- 

 trasts finely with the Fir and other evergreens. The Arbor 



