110 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



The forest grown tree is of beautiful proportions. Unless much 

 crowded for room, it is a tall, graceful cone, the branches drooping 

 slightly, and forming thick masses. In the Sierra Nevada mountains, 

 within the range of this cedar, the winter snows are very heavy. It is 

 not unusual for two or three feet of very wet snow to fall in a single day. 

 The incense cedar's drooping branches shed the snow like a tent roof, and 

 a limb broken or seriously deformed by weight of snow is seldom seen. 

 Deer and other wild animals, when surprised by a heavy fall of snow, 

 seek the shelter of an incense cedar, if one can be found, and there lie in 

 security until the storm passes. 



It is a tree which does fairly well in cultivation, and several varieties 

 have been developed. It lives through the cold of a New England 

 winter. Its cones are about three-fourths inch in length, and ripen in the 

 autumn. 



Incense cedar has filled an important place in the development of 

 the great central valley of California, where it has supplied more fence 

 posts than any other tree. Posts of redwood have been its chief com- 

 petitor, but generally the region has been divided, and each tree has 

 supplied its part. The redwood's field has been the coast, the cedar's 

 the inland valley within reach of the Sierras. It has been nothing 

 unusual for ranchmen to haul cedar posts on wagons forty or fifty miles. 



The manufacture of posts from incense cedar has entailed an enor- 

 mous waste of timber. The thick sap wood is not wanted, and in the 

 process of converting a trunk into posts, the woodsman first splits off the 

 sap and throws it away. In trunks of small and medium size, the sap- 

 wood may amount to more than the heartwood, and is a total loss. 



The tree's bark is thick and stringy, and it is generally wasted; but 

 in some instances it is used as a surface dressing for mountain roads. It 

 wears to pieces and becomes a pulpy mass, and it protects the surface of 

 the road from excessive wear, and from washing in time of heavy rain. 



Approximately one-half of the incense cedar trees, as they stand in 

 the woods, are defective. A fungus (Dadalia vorax) attacks them in the 

 heartwood and excavates pits throughout the length of the trunks. The 

 galleries resemble the work of ants, and as ants often take possession of 

 them and probably enlarge them, it is quite generally believed that the 

 pits are due to ants. The excavations are frequently filled with dry, 

 brown dust, sometimes packed very hard and tight. The cedar thus 

 affected resembles "pecky cypress," and it is believed that the same 

 species of fungus, or a closely related species, is responsible for the 

 injury to both cypress in the South and incense cedar on the Pacific 

 coast. It is not generally regarded by users of cedar posts that the 

 honey-combed condition of the wood lessens the service which the post 





