208 RED CEDAR 



open, sends up a straight stem covered from bottom to top 

 with small short branches, forming a narrow-based, slim, 

 sharp cone for a crown ; but as age creeps on, its lower 

 limbs die or cease to grow and the crown assumes a round 

 and irregular form. It is a slow grower at all periods of 

 life. One on the author's lawn has a stem three and one 

 half inches in diameter, one foot above ground, outside the 

 bark, and is fourteen feet high and fully twenty years of 

 age. A board in his possession, showing nearly the full 

 diameter of a tree, which was fourteen inches, has an aver- 

 age of twenty annual rings to the inch for the first six 

 inches of its growth and an average of thirty-five for the 

 remainder. The tree was not less than one hundred and 

 ninety years of age. It will not be safe to count on saw 

 timber in less than one hundred and fifty years from the 

 time of planting. 



The wood is light, soft, easily worked, close-grained, 

 quite brittle, not strong, and very fragrant. The heart- 

 wood is a dull red, with thin and nearly white sapwood. 

 There is a plain but not prominent distinction between 

 spring and summer growth both in color and hardness, as 

 any one sharpening a lead pencil will have observed. The 

 medullary rays are numerous, small, and hardly visible to 

 the naked eye. It is largely used for posts and for sills of 

 buildings and other places where great durability is de- 

 sired, the sapwood, however, decaying much sooner than 

 the heartwood. The heartwood is extensively used for lead 

 pencils, no other wood proving so acceptable, interior 

 finish, closets and chests to exclude moths, and for pails, 

 tubs, and other household utensils. 



It is a good seeder and the seeds are widely scattered by 

 birds, but germination is slow and difficult to bring about 

 in the nursery, and seedlings sometimes suffer seriously 

 from a fungus disease. There is considerable difficulty at- 

 tending growing seedlings to an age suitable to transplant 

 into the forest. Any one contemplating it to even a moder- 

 ate extent should consult United States Forest Service 



