76 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



or obscurely glandular-pitted, usually not more than \' long. Flowers about 1 1 ^' 

 long, dark brown. Fruit ripening early in the autumn, clustered near the ends of 



the branches, much reflexed, 

 ' long, with thin leath- 

 ery scales, conspicuously 

 marked near the apex by 

 the free border of the flow- 

 er-scales furnished with 

 short stout erect or recurved 

 dark mucros; seeds often 

 3 under each fertile scale, 

 rather shorter than their 

 usually slightly unequal 

 wings about \' long. 



A tree, frequently 200 

 high, with a broad gradu- 

 ally tapering buttressed 

 base sometimes 15 in di- 

 ameter at the ground and in old age often separating toward the summit into 2 or 3 

 erect divisions, short horizontal branches usually pendulous at the ends forming a 

 dense narrow pyramidal head, and slender much compressed branchlets often slightly 

 zigzag, light bright yellow-green during their first year, then cinnamon-brown, and 

 after the falling of the leaves, usually in their third year, lustrous and dark reddish 

 brown often tinged with purple, the lateral branchlets 5'-6' long, light green and 

 lustrous on the upper surface, somewhat paler on the lower surface, turning yellow 

 and falling generally at the end of their second season. Bark bright cinnamon-red, 

 i' '' thick, irregularly divided by narrow shallow fissures into broad ridges rounded 

 on the back and broken on the surface into long narrow rather loose plate-like scales. 

 Wood light, soft, not strong, brittle, coarse-grained, easily split, dull brown tinged 

 with red; largely used in Washington and Oregon for the interior finish of build- 

 ings, doors, sashes, fences, shingles, and in cabinet-making and cooperage. From 

 this tree the Indians of the northwest coast split the planks used in the construction 

 of their lodges, carved the totems which decorate their villages, and hollowed out 

 their great war canoes; and from the fibres of the inner bark made ropes, blankets, 

 and thatch for their cabins. 



Distribution. Singly and in small groves on low moist bottom-lands or near 

 the banks of mountain streams, from the sea-level to elevations of 6000 in the 

 interior, and from Yas Bay, Alaska, southward along the coast ranges of British 

 Columbia, western Washington and Oregon, where it is the most abundant and 

 grows to its largest size, and through the California coast region to Mendocino 

 County, spreading eastward along many of the interior ranges of British Columbia 

 to the western slope of the continental divide, and along those of northern Washing- 

 ton and Idaho to the mountains of northern Montana. 



Often cultivated as an ornamental tree in the parks and gardens of western and 

 central Europe where it has grown rapidly and vigorously, and occasionally in the 

 middle and north Atlantic states. 



