66 Illustrations of Conifers. 



LIBOCEDRUS DECURRENS (Torrey). INCENSE CEDAR. 

 LIBOCEDRUS CRAIGANA (Henry). 



Vritch's Man. Conif. ed. 2, p. 258 (1900). 



Trets of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. HI. p. 489 (1908). 



A TREE attaining in America 180 feet in height and 21 feet in girth 

 with a straight tapering trunk. Bark nearly an inch thick, light 

 cinnamon-red, irregularly fissuring into scaly ridges. Cultivated trees 

 in Great Britain assume a columnar habit with short ascending branches, 

 the trunk being, covered with reddish-brown bark which peels off in 

 long strips. Branchlets covered with leaves and forming frondose ex- 

 pansions as in a Thuya. 



Leaves scale-like, dark glossy green, each set of four equal in 

 length, adnate for most of the length to the branchlets, but free at 

 the tips which end in fine cartilaginous points, about & inch long on 

 secondary and tertiary axes, and inch long on main axes. 



Flowers monoecious. Male flowers oblong, inch long, with about 

 twelve to sixteen stamens, decussately opposite on a slender axis. 



Cones pendulous, about one inch long, reddish-brown when mature, 

 consisting of six scales. Seeds in pairs at the base of the two larger 

 scales, each with two wings, one short, the other nearly as long as 

 the scale. 



Libocedrus decurrem was discovered by Colonel Fremont near 

 the upper waters of the Sacramento river in 1846, and introduced 

 into Great Britain by Jeffrey in 1853 as Thuya Craigana. This 

 tree is widely distributed at altitudes of 3,000 to 7,500 feet over 

 the western slopes of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains, 

 the Californian coast ranges from Mendocino country to the San Ber- 

 nardino Mountains, and is found also on mount San Pedro Martin in 

 Lower California. It usually grows singly or in small groves. Accord- 

 ing to Sargent the wood is light and durable and is used for furniture 

 and indoor carpentry. 



The best specimen at Bayfordbury, which fruited freely in 1907, 

 is 52 feet high by 5 feet 9 inches in girth. The date of planting is 

 not recorded. 



