BOTANY. 97 
The Californian white cedar (Libocedrus decurrens) grows 
one hundred feet high, and seven feet thick in the trunk. It 
is found from Mount Shasta to the Tejon Pass. The trunk is 
usually angular. Many of the trees are affected with a dry-rot 
which destroys their value as timber. 
The fragrant-cedar (Cupressus fragrans) is found along the 
northern coast of the state. It is a large tree, and produces a 
white, clear lumber, valuable for furniture and the inside work 
of houses. The wood has a strong, lasting, and not unpleas- 
ant odor, half way between turpentine and ottar of roses. 
Lawson’s cedar (Cupressus lawsoniana) is a tree of little 
value. 
The arbor-vite, also called cedar (Thuja gigantea), is a most 
symmetrical and graceful conifer, growing to be nearly three 
hundred feet high. 
§ 71. Yew and Nutmeg.—The Western yew is an upright 
tree, from fifty to seventy-five high, with thin and light foli- 
age, the leaves being about an inch long. Its growth is 
straighter, its branches fewer, and its foliage thinner, more 
feathery, and lighter in color, than the European yew. It 
grows on the Sierra Nevada from 34° northward to British 
Columbia. 
The coast cypress (Cupressus macro-carpus) is found only 
on Cedar Point, at Monterey, and there are not more than one 
hundred trees of it there. The foliage is very dense. 
The Californian mitineg (Zorreya californica) is a graceful 
and beautiful evergreen found in the Coast Mountains near the 
bay of San Francisco. It grows from fifty to seventy-five feet 
high, and resembles the Western yew in foliage and general 
form. The fruit is like a nutmeg in size and shape, but it has 
a disagreeable terebinthine taste, and is never used as a condi- 
ment. é 
§ 72. Laurel.—The Californian laurel, or bay ( Oreodaphne 
californica), is one of the most common and beautiful trees of 
the coast valleys. Itis an evergreen, which grows to a height 
of fifty feet, with a trunk sometimes thirty inches in diameter. 
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