Incense Cedar 



93 



The trunk is tall and straight, broadly and irregularly lobed at the base, from 

 which it gradually tapers. The branches are slender, somewhat pendulous below, 

 but erect toward the top, forming a narrow, open head. Very old trees are more 

 or less irregularly outhned, owing to the abnormal development of some of the 

 branches. The bark is about 2 cm. thick, irregularly furrowed into close, scaly 

 ridges of a bright red-brown color. The twigs are rather stout, somewhat flattened, 

 yellowish green, soon becoming round, brown, or purplish brown, and marked 

 with circular scars; the lateral twigs are flattened, and fall off after two or three 

 years. The leaves are in whorls of 4, scale-Uke, oblong or obovate, decurrent, 

 and closely joined to the twigs except at the thickened sharp-pointed apex; the 

 lateral ones are glandular and keeled, the inner are much compressed and almost 

 covered by the lateral; 

 on the leading twigs 

 they are about i cm. 

 long, those on the 

 smaller twigs only about 

 one third as long. The 

 flowers, appearing about 

 the end of January, are 

 monoecious, the two 

 kinds occurring at the 

 tips of short, lateral 

 twigs, but on different 

 branchlets, the stami- 

 nate in great profusion, 

 often giving the tree a 

 golden aspect; they are 

 nearly sessile, ovoid, 5 

 mm. long, consisting of 

 12 to 15 stamens with 



Fig. 70. Incense Cedar. 



short, stout filaments and broad yellow connectives. The pistiUate flowers are 

 subglobose to oblong, about 3 mm. long, subtended by several pairs of broadly 

 ovate acute scales, which remain at the base of the fmit, which ripens and drops 

 its seed in the autumn of the same season but persists until the next spring.' 

 The cones are drooping, oblong, 18 to 25 mm. long, somewhat obHque at the base, 

 light reddish brown, composed of 3 pairs of opposite scales, the lower ovate, acute, 

 recurved, and about one third the length of the entire cone; the second or inner 

 scales are ovate-oblong, woody, shghtly convex, nearly as long as the entire cone 

 and about 8 mm. wide, spreading from the flat, woody axis formed by the fusion 

 of the upper scales. The seeds, of which there are 2 under each of the middle 

 scales, are oblong- lanceolate, 8 to 12 mm. long, with membranaceous, light brown, 

 oblique wings; there are only 2 cotyledons and the endosperm ^s fleshy. 



The wood of the Incense cedar is soft, weak, close-grained, and light reddish 



