CHAPTER XII; THE INCENSE CEDAR 



Genus LIBOCEDRUS, Endl. 



Tall, aromatic, resinous trees. Leaves scale-like, 4-ranked, 

 in flat sprays. Flowers monoecious, solitary, minute, terminal. 

 Fruit an annual cone, oblong, few-scaled. 



(L. decurrens) incense cedar 



This single representative of its genus in America has seven 

 sister species, chiefly in the Southern Hemisphere. Formosa and 

 southwestern China, New Zealand, New Guinea, and South Amer- 

 ica from Chili to Patagonia these have their incense cedars, dis- 

 tinguished by the flat, frond-like spray of bright green scale 

 leaves. Our species is grown in parks in the neighbourhood of 

 Philadelphia and New York, and in protected situations about 

 Boston. In Europe it is often planted for ornament. 



It is native to the slopes of the Cascade and other coast ranges 

 and the Sierra Nevada. It extends from Oregon into Lower Cali- 

 fornia, and reaches its best estate and greatest numbers in the 

 central part of California, between 5,000 and 7,000 feet above the 

 sea. Its lumber resembles that of arbor vitae, and is used for 

 furniture, fencing, lath and shingles, for interior woodwork, and 

 for flume building. 



John Muir's description of it is most illuminating: 



"The incense cedar, when full grown, is a magnificent tree, 

 120 to nearly 200 feet high, 5 to 8 and occasionally 12 feet in 

 diameter, with cinnamon-coloured bark and warm, yellow-green 

 foliage, and in general appearance like an arbor vitae. It is dis- 

 tributed through the main forest from an elevation of 3,000 to 

 6,000 feet, and in sheltered portions of canons on the warm sides 

 to 7,500 feet. In midwinter, when most trees are asleep, it puts 

 forth its flowers. The pistillate are pale green and inconspicuous, 

 but the staminate are yellow, about one-fourth of an inch long, 

 and are in myriads, tingeing all the branches with gold, and 

 making the tree as it stands in the snow look like a gigantic golden- 

 rod. Though scattered rather sparsely amongst its companions 

 in the open woods, it is seldom out of sight, and its bright brown 

 shaft and warm masses of plumy foliage make a striking feature 



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