124 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



It is said that occasional exports of this wood go to China where it is 

 finished in imitation of scarce and expensive woods of that country. 



Yellow cedar is a wood with a future. Its splendid properties 

 cannot fail to give it a place of no small importance in factories and in 

 general building operations. The supply has scarcely yet been touched, 

 but it cannot much longer remain an undeveloped asset. It is apparent- 

 ly a high-class cooperage material, but it does not seem to have been used 

 much if at all in that industry. The same might be said of it for doors. 

 It is heavier than spruce, white pine, and redwood, but where weight is 

 not a matter for objection, it ought to equal them in all desirable 

 qualities. 



In much of its range it is generally exempt from forest fire injury, 

 because its native woods are nearly always too wet to burn. 



ROCKY MOUNTAIN JUNIPER (Juniperus scopulorum) is scattered over the 

 mountains from Dakota and Nebraska to Washington and British Columbia, and 

 southward to western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Except near the Pacific 

 coast, it is usually found at altitudes above 5,000 feet. It clings closely to dry, rocky 

 ridges where it attains a height of thirty or forty feet, and a diameter of three feet or 

 less. The trunk usually divides near the ground into several stems. The bright blue 

 berries ripen the second year. The wood resembles that of red cedar, and is used in 

 the same way, as far as it is used at all. It is not a source of lumber. A little is 

 sawed occasionally on mountain mills, and the lumber is used locally in house build- 

 ing, particularly for window and door frames; but sawlogs are short, and because of 

 their poor form, the output of lumber is negligible. Some of it finds its wayintoTexas 

 where it is manufactured into clothes chests and wardrobes, and these are sold as red 

 cedar. A choice mountain juniper log, with large, sound heartwood, produces lumber 

 with a delicate grain and is more attractive than red cedar when made into chests and 

 boxes. By habit of growth, it includes patches of white sapwood in the darker heart- 

 wood. When these are sawed through in converting the logs into boards, the islands 

 of white wood scattered over the surface produce a unique effect not wanting in 

 artistic value. Some of the other western junipers possess similar characteristics. 

 Sometimes patches of bark are also found imbedded in the interoir of the trees. 



