THE ARBOR- VITAES 269 



Scotia and New Brunswick northwestward to tlie mouth 

 oi the Saskatchewan River, always in swampy regions, 

 or along the rocky banks of streams. In the East it 

 follows the mountains to Tennessee, and from Lake 

 Winnipeg it extends south to middle Minnesota and 

 northern Illinois. In cultivation it is oftenest seen as 

 an individual lawn and park tree, or in hedges on boundary 

 lines. It submits comfortably to severe pruning, is easily 

 transplanted, and comes readily from seed. Plantations 

 grow rapidly into fence posts and telegraph poles. The 

 wood is durable in wet ground, but very soft, coarse, and 

 brittle. 



The Red Cedar 



T. plicata, D. Don. 



The red cedar or canoe cedar is the giant arbor-vitae 

 of the coast region from British Columbia to northern 

 California and east over the mountain ranges into Idaho 

 and northern Montana. Its buttressed trunk is a fluted 

 column one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet high 

 in western Washington and Oregon, along the banks of 

 mountain streams and in the rich bottom land farther 

 seaward. The leaves in a flat spray at once distinguish 

 this tree from any other conifer, for they are pointed, scale- 

 like, closely overlapping each other in alternate pairs. 



The clustered cones, with their six or eight seed- 

 bearing scales, seem absurdl}' small fruits on so huge a tree. 

 None exceeds one half an inch in height, but their number 

 makes up for size deficiency and the seed crop is tre- 

 mendous. 



The Alaskan Indian chooses the tall bole of a red cedar 

 for his totem pole, and from the massive butt hollows 



