36 BULLETIN 680^ U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTUEE. 



largest development, which is attained chiefly in the Pacific region, to 

 medium or small-sized trees produced in the Rocky Mountain region; 

 while at high elevations in both regions trees are often only a few feet 

 high. Large trees are from 150 to 175 feet in height, or very excep- 

 tionally from 190 to 200 feet, with diameters of from 5 to 8 feet, or, 

 in the case of very old trees, sometimes from 10 to 18 feet through.''^ 

 Small and medium-sized trees range from 60 to 120 feet in height and 

 from 2 to 4 feet in diameter. The enormous girth of the largest trees 

 is at the base; their diameter decreases so rapidly that at 20 feet from 

 the ground they may be no more than 9 or 10 feet in diameter. In 

 such trees, from 60 to 100 feet of clear trunk is common, while the 

 clear trunk of smaller trees is from 10 to 50 feet. It is only in densely 

 crowded stands that trees have long, clear trunks, and even then they 

 often have scattered branches below the main crown. The boles of 

 young trees are fairly straight, but large trees are frequently bowed 

 or slightly bent and are rarely perfectly cylindrical. 



Young trees have narrow, open, conical crowns reaching almost 

 to the ground and tapering to a sharp top, the slender whiplike 

 leader usually nodding in a graceful curve. Old trees in dense 

 stands have only a short, blunt, or round-topped conical head. A 

 notable characteristic of western red cedar is the frequent produc- 

 tion of two leaders, which combine in forming a dense crown. Except 

 when growmg in very dense stands, trees retain practically aU their 

 branches until they are 18 or 20 inches in diameter and from 50 to 

 80 feet high, while trees growing in the open become much larger 

 before they lose their lower branches. On young trees the slender 

 branches aU curve upward, but later as the limbs become very long, 

 the lower ones droop and those higher swing down in a long, graceful 

 curve, with an upward sweep at the ends. The flat, lacelike, yellow- 

 green side sprays hang from the branches like hues of fringe. 



The bark of western red cedar is thin, even that of old trunks 

 being only from five-eights to seven-eights of an inch thick. Because 

 of its thin bark this tree rarely escapes being fataUy injured by 

 fire. Freshly broken bark is of a clear, reddish, cinnamon-brown 

 color, but externally it is often weathered to various shades of 

 grayish brown, depending upon exposure to the light. The bark is 

 distinctly but shaUowly seamed, the narrow ridges bemg flat on young 

 trees and rounded on old trunks. The main ridges run irregularly 

 but continuously, with rare breaks, and are connected at short inter- 

 s' Under date of February 12, 1909, a letter from Mr. F. H. Conant, of Auburn, Wash. , gives the diameter 

 of a western red cedar cut in sec. 8, T. 23 N., R. 9 E., west slope of the Cascade Mountains, King Coimty, 

 Wash. , as 18 feet 4 inches at a point 12 fee t above the ground. The height of tliis tree could not be accurately 

 measured because the top was dead and had been brolcen off. Mr. Conant mentions another tree about 

 the same size standing near the tree cut. A decay at the center of the tree cut was 6 feet in diameter. Allow- 

 ing sufficient time for the tree to have attained 6 feet in diameter, the wTiter found that by counting the an- 

 nual layers of growth in the sound wood this cedar must have been approximatelj' 2,265 years old when it 

 was cut. 



