88 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



10. Juniperus virginiana L. Red Cedar. Savin. 



Leaves usually opposite, acute or acuminate or occasionally obtuse, rounded and glandu- 

 lar or eglandular on the back, about iV long, dark blue-green or glaucous (var. glaucaCarr.), 

 at the north turning russet or yellow-brown during the winter, beginning in their third 

 season to grow hard and woody, and remaining two or three years longer on the branches, 

 on young plants and vigorous branchlets linear-lanceolate, long-pointed, light yellow- 

 green, without glands, \'-\' long. Flowers: dioecious or very rarely monoecious: male 

 with 10 or 12 stamens, their connectives rounded and entire, with 4 or occasionally 5 

 or 6 pollen-sacs; scales of the female flower violet color, acute and spreading, becoming 

 obliterated from the fruit. Fruit subglobose, \'-\' in diameter, pale green when fully 

 grown, dark blue and covered with a glaucous bloom at maturity, with a firm skin, thin 



Fig. 87 



sweetish resinous flesh, and 1 or 2 or rarely 3 or 4 seeds; seeds acute and occasionally 

 apiculate at apex, \'-\' long, with a comparatively small 2-lobed hilum, and 2 cotyledons. 



A tree, occasionally 100 high, with a trunk 3-4 in diameter, often lobed and eccentric, 

 and frequently buttressed toward the base, generally not more than 40-50 tall, with short 

 slender branches horizontal on the lower part of the tree, erect above, forming a narrow 

 compact pyramidal head, in old age usually becoming broad and round-topped or irregular, 

 and slender branchlets terete after the disappearance of the leaves and covered with close 

 dark brown bark tinged with red or gray; on exposed cliffs on the coast of Maine, sometimes 

 only a few inches high with long branches forming broad dense mats. Bark \'-\' thick, 

 light brown tinged with red, and separated into long narrow scales fringed on the margins, 

 and persistent for many years. Wood light, close-grained, brittle, not strong, dull red, 

 with thin nearly white sapwood, very fragrant, easily worked; largely used for posts, the 

 sills of buildings, the interior finish of houses, the lining of closets and chests for the preser- 

 vation of woolens against the attacks of moths, and largely for pails and other small 

 articles of woodenware. A decoction of the fruit and leaves is used in medicine, and oil of 

 red cedar distilled from the leaves and wood as a perfume. 



Distribution. Dry gravelly slopes and rocky ridges, often immediately on the seacoast, 

 from southern Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to the coast of Georgia, the interior of 

 southern Alabama and Mississippi, and westward to the valley of the lower Ottawa River, 

 southern Michigan, eastern North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas, and eastern 

 Texas, not ascending the mountains of New England and New York nor the high southern 

 Alleghanies; in middle Kentucky and Tennessee, and northern Alabama and Mississippi, 



