Remarks on the most Important Plant-Societies of the Island. 



311 



in the vicinity of Irlia Steratsa, the cedar-trees occur in so great number that we may be entitled to 

 use the term of real cedar-forests. Through their peculiar, blue-green colour and the étagére-formed 

 position of their branches the cedar-trees draw the attention even at some distance. The trees are generally 

 not big, and they can hardly be very old. A circumference of the stem of more than 1.7 m. is excep- 

 tional, and the thickest trunk, which I had occasion to see, measured only a little more than 2 m. in circum- 

 ference. Tlic height rarely exceeds s a 10 m., but some trees undoubtedly attain a height of 15 m. 



Fig. 136. Sketch-Map, showing the Distribution of Cedars on Cyprus (the 3 small black Areas). 



These measures agree rather well with the maximum dimensions of the trees, indicated by E. Haetmann: 

 circumference ca. 2 ra., greatest height near 12 m.') There is, however, a possibility that still larger 

 trees exist; in any case my guide, the mukhtar of Kambos, uttered that he has seen before bigger trees 

 than I had the opportunity of measuring. 



According to Hartmann, the flowering of the cedar on Cyprus takes place from the middle of 

 September to the middle of October, but often seems to fail completely. Of the numerous trees, which he 

 observed in May 190-1 only a single one had a few young cones, and older cones were neither seen on 

 the trees nor on the ground beneath them. Yet in the autumn of 1904 some of the trees must have bloomed, 

 as in July 1905 I found in several places cones from the foregoing year, which had already begun to 

 drop from the trees. 



The cedar is a prominently light -demanding tree. When quite young it has a regular pyramidical 

 shape and reminds rather much of young spruces of corresponding age; the branches, however, are 



') E. Hartmann. Die Wiilder der Instd Cyiiern, p. 181. 



