52 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



narrowed into nearly straight or slightly twisted petioles articulate on bases as long 

 or rather longer than the petioles, irregularly deciduous during their third and fourth 

 years. Flowers : staminate borne on slender pubescent drooping stems, violet- 

 purple; pistillate erect, with delicate lustrous dark purple or yellow-green bracts 

 gradually narrowed above into slender often slightly reflexed tips and much longer 

 than their scales. Fruit sessile, cylindrical-oblong, narrowed toward the blunt apex 

 and somewhat toward the base, erect until more than half grown, pendulous or 

 rarely erect at maturity, |'-3' long, with thin delicate scales usually as broad as 

 long, and gradually contracted from above the middle to the wedge-shaped base, 

 rounded at the slightly thickened more or less erose margins, puberulous on the 

 outer surface, usually bright bluish purple or occasionally pale yellow-green, four 

 or five times as long as their short-pointed dark purple or brown bracts ; seeds light 

 brown, ty long, often marked on the surface next their scales with 1 or 2 large 

 resin-vesicles, with wings nearly ^' long, broadest above the middle, gradually 

 narrowed below, slightly or not at all oblique at the rounded apex. 



A tree, usually 70-100 but occasionally 150 high, with a slightly tapering trunk 

 4-5 in diameter, gracefully pendant slender branches furnished with drooping 

 frond-like lateral branches, their ultimate divisions erect and forming an open 

 pyramid surmounted by the long drooping leading shoots, and thin flexible or some- 

 times stout rigid branchlets light reddish brown and covered for two or three years 

 with short pale dense pubescence, becoming grayish brown and very scaly. Winter- 

 buds acute, about ^' long, the scales of the outer ranks furnished on the back with 

 conspicuous midribs produced into slender deciduous awl-like tips. Bark of the 

 trunk I'-l^' thick, deeply divided into connected rounded ridges broken into thin 

 closely appressed dark cinnamon scales shaded with blue or purple. Wood light, 

 soft, not strong, close-grained, pale brown or red, with thin nearly white sapwood; 

 occasionally manufactured into lumber. 



Distribution. Exposed ridges and slopes at high altitudes along the upper border 

 of the forest from southeastern Alaska, southward over the mountain ranges of 

 British Columbia to the Olympic Mountains of Washington, and eastward to the 

 western slopes of the Selkirk Mountains in the interior of southern British Colum- 

 bia, northern Montana, northern Idaho, the Powder River Mountains, and along the 

 Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon, on the mountain ranges of northern 

 California, and along the Sierra Nevada to the canon of the south fork of King's 

 River, California; in Alaska occasionally descending to the sea-level, and toward 

 the southern limits of its range often ascending to elevations of 10,000. 



Often planted as an ornamental tree in western and central Europe, and rarely in 

 the eastern United States. 



5. PSEUDOTSUGA, Carr. 



Pyramidal trees, with thick deeply furrowed bark, hard strong wood, with spirally 

 marked wood-cells, slender usually horizontal irregularly whorled branches clothed 

 with slender spreading lateral branches forming broad flat-topped masses of foliage, 

 ovate acute leaf-buds, the lateral buds in the axils of upper leaves, their inner scales 

 accrescent and marking the branchlets with ring-like scars. Leaves linear, flat, 

 rounded and obtuse or acuminate at the apex, straight or incurved, grooved on the 

 upper side, marked on the lower side by numerous rows of stomata on each side of 

 the prominent midrib, spreading nearly at right angles with the branch. Flowers 





