184 



AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



ties at one time. Builders of tanks, flumes, and water pipes procure 

 some of their best material, and large quantities of it, from redwood 

 sawmills. Few woods are more universally found in furniture factories. 



GOWBN CYPRESS (Cupressus goveniana) follows the California coast from 

 Mcndocino county, California, to San Diego, and ascends mountains to the height of 

 3,000 feet in some localities. At its best it is fifty feet uigh and two feet in diameter; 

 but it extends as a shrub over many sandy tracts. Specimens no more than a foot 

 high sometimes bear cones. The Gowen cypress sheds its leaves the third and fourth 

 years. Cones are from one-half to one inch long, and each bears about 100 seeds. 

 The wood is light, soft, weak, light brown in color, the thick sapwood nearly white. 

 The medullary rays are numerous but obscure. The wood is used for posts and other 

 ranch purposes. Woodpeckers attack tlie trunks, picking holes through the bark to 

 suck the juice from the cambium layer beneath. 



DWARF CYPRESS (Cupressus pygmatd) was formerly supposed to be a stunted 

 form of Gowen cypress. The ranges of both lie in the same region, on the coast of 

 California in Mendocino county. The average height of dwarf cypress is from ten to 

 twenty feet, with trunk diameter from six to twelve inches; but in peat swamps and 

 on sterile sands it may not exceed three or four feet in height. It bears abundant 

 cones at that size, and sometimes a tree no more than a foot high has mature cones. 

 They ripen the second year, but remain a long time on the branches. The trees thrive 

 in the most forbidding places, and are sometimes the only occupants of bogs or sand 

 dunes. The wood is necessarily of little value, because of the small size of trees. 

 There seems to be no record of a dwarf cypress over sixty years of age; but it is be- 

 lieved that much older trees have fallen victims to fire. 



