74. CHAMAECYPARIS THYOIDES WHITE CEDAR. 41 



NOTE. This tree is generally considered a variety or monstrosity of 

 the Black Poplar (P. nigra) of Europe, all the existing specimens hav- 

 ing come from a certain one or few individuals in the remote past and 

 reproduced by cuttings. The tree is of short life, and especially of late 

 years seems to be of more and more feeble constitution. This is thought 

 by some to be only the natural degeneration or decline which comes from 

 lack of cross-fertilizing influence, and that the time is not far distant 

 when it will become extinct, unless new individual sprouts should happen 

 to appear to revitalize the race. 



GYMNOSPEEM^E. 



Flowering, exogenous plants with leaves chiefly parallel-veined and 

 cotyledons frequently more than two. Flowers diclinous and very in- 

 complete; pistil represented by an open scale or leaf, or altogether want- 

 ing, with ovules naked, fertilized by direct contact with the pollen, and 

 seeds at maturity naked without a true pericarp. 



OKDER CONIFERS: PINE FAMILY. 



Leaves mostly awl-shaped or needle-shaped, evergreen, entire and paralled-veined. 

 Flowers monoecious, or rarely dioecious, in catkins or cones, destitute of both calyx 

 and corolla; stamens one or several (usually united); ovary, style and stigma want- 

 ing; ovules one or several at the base of a scale, which serves as a carpel, or on an 

 open disk. Fruit a cone, woody and with distinct scales, or somewhat berry-like, 

 and with fleshy coherent scales; seeds orthotropous, embryo in the axis of the 

 albumen. 



Trees or shrubs with a resinous juice. 



GENUS CHAMAECYPARIS, SPACH. 



Learns evergreen, very small, scale-like, imbricated and closely appressed, or on 

 vigorous shoots awl-shaped and free; leaf-buds not scaly; branchlets distichous and 

 finely divided. Flowers monoecious, in small, terminal, few-flowered catkins. Sterile 

 catkins ovoid, with filaments in the form of shield-shaped scales, each bearing 

 beneath its lower margin 2-4 anther-cells, opening lengthwise. Fertile catkins 

 globose with shield-shaped scales decussate, each bearing at its base several 

 bottle-shaped, orthotropous ovules. Fruit a small, spherical cone, the thick, shield- 

 shaped scales of which are furnished with a point or boss in the center, and fit closely 

 together along their margins until maturity, when they open and liberate their 

 angled or somewhat winged seeds; cotyledons 2-3. 



(C ' hamaecyparis is from the Greek xafJLoa, on the ground, and KV7tdpi66o ! -, ) cypress.} 



74. CHAMAECYPARIS THYOIDES, L.* 

 WHITE CEDAR. 



Ger., Weisze Zeder; Fr., CedreUanc; Sp., Cedro bianco. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: Leaves pale glaucous-green, minute, triangular awl- 

 shaped or ovate, and each furnished with a gland or tubercle on its back, imbricated 

 in 4 rows and covering the finely divided branchlets. Cones small, spherical, about 

 in. in diameter, of about three pairs of scales and with slightly winged seeds. 



^Chamaecyparis sphaeroidea, Spach. 



