The Cypresses 



foliage, and the treetop is warmed by the ruddy colour of the 

 oldest leaves, which remain for some time on the tree after they 

 are dead. The range of the species is from Alaska into Oregon, 

 climbing the mountains to the altitude of 3,000 feet, where the 

 tree is reduced to a shrub. 



The hard wood is very close of texture and pale yellow. It 

 is durable and pleasantly aromatic. Carpenters employ it in the 

 interior fmishing of houses. It is made into furniture, and used 

 in boat building. 



Horticultural forms of this species are astonishingly numerous. 

 Sudworth gives sixty-eight varieties in his "Check List." 



Lawson Cypress {Chamcecyparis Lawsoniana, A. Murr.) — 

 A spire-like tree, 1 50 to 200 feet high, with short horizontal branches 

 ending in a flat spray. Bark very thick, with rounded scaly 

 ridges, dark red. Wood hard, light, strong, pale yellow, close 

 grained, resinous, fragrant, easily worked. Leaves minute, bright 

 green, in opposite pairs. Flowers: minute, numerous; staminate 

 bright red; pistillate dark coloured. Fruit clustered cones, pea 

 sized, of few scales; seeds 2 to 4 under each scale. Preferred 

 habitat, mountain slopes. Distribution, coast mountains of Oregon 

 and California. Uses: A valuable ornamental tree. Wood used 

 in house finishing, flooring, and in boat building and for railroad 

 ties and fence posts. Matches are made of it. 



Somewhat of the beauty of those Western cypresses can be 

 appreciated by looking in gardens and nurseries at the multitude 

 of varieties of each of them in cultivation in this country and 

 abroad. In their own country the parents of these precocious 

 ornamental ofi'spring are to be seen. No horticultural substitute 

 for the original will suflice the tree lover. To go to Oregon is his 

 fondly cherished plan. To see that twenty-mile forest belt of 

 Lawson cypresses that stretches from Point Gregory to the mouth 

 of the Coquille River — only this will satisfy. There are men who 

 name as "the handsomest of the conifers" trees outside of this 

 genus, but the visitor to this splendid grove of Lawson cypresses 

 will be inclined to deny it. It is hard to keep to a sliding scale 

 and avoid superlatives in judging those Western trees. 



The Japanese Retinosporas, beautiful evergreen of this type, 

 widely cultivated in many horticultural forms, were assigned to a 

 separate genus by Siebold and Zuccarini, but other authorities 

 consider them all to be juvenile forms of the genus Chamaecyparis, 



