116 OUR NATIONAL PARKS 



The Douglas spruce grows with the great 

 pines, especially on the cool north sides of ridges 

 and canons, and is here nearly as large as the 

 yellow pine, but less abundant. The wood is 

 strong and tough, the bark thick and deeply 

 furrowed, and on vigorous, quick-growing trees 

 the stout, spreading branches are covered with 

 innumerable slender, swaying sprays, handsomely 

 clothed with short leaves. The flowers are about 

 three fourths of an inch in length, red or green- 

 ish, not so showy as the pendulous bracted 

 cones. But in June and July, when the young 

 bright yellow leaves appear, the entire tree seems 

 to be covered with bloom. 



It is this grand tree that forms the famous 

 forests of western Oregon, Washington, and the 

 adjacent coast regions of British Columbia, 

 where it attains its greatest size and is most 

 abundant, making almost pure forests over thou- 

 sands of square miles, dark and close and almost 

 inaccessible, many of the trees towering with 

 straight, imperceptibly tapered shafts to a height 

 of three hundred feet, their heads together shut- 

 ting out the light, — one of the largest, most 

 widely distributed, and most important of all the 

 Western giants. 



The incense cedar (Libocedrus decurrens), 

 when full grown, is a magnificent tree, one hun- 

 dred and twenty to nearly two hundred feet 

 high, five to eight and occasionally twelve feet 



