I204 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



at a meeting of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1870, and obtained a first-class 



certificate. 



18. Van lutea? Paler yellow in colour, but equally fine, and of a more erect 

 habit. About the best that we have seen is a tree now about 25 ft. high at 

 Castlewellan." Var. ochroleuca appears to be another yellowish variety. 



Distribution 



The Lawson cypress in its distribution occupies a much smaller area than 

 Thuya plicata, with which it mingles at its northern limit, and which it entirely 

 resembles in its occurrence as a shade-bearer in the mixed coniferous forest of western 

 North America at low altitudes. It grows in south-western Oregon and north- 

 western California, in a climate characterised by moderate temperatures, heavy 

 rainfall, a high degree of humidity, a foggy atmosphere, and a large proportion of 

 cloudy days. On the coast the temperature ranges between 10° and 95" Fahr., and 

 the rainfall between 30 and 100 in., averaging 56 in. Increase in altitude is 

 attended by greater seasonal and daily ranges of temperature, and by an increase in 

 snowfall ; but the Lawson cypress, usually growing below 3000 ft. (rarely reaching 

 5000 ft.), is only luxuriant and plentiful in the region under the influence of the 

 ocean winds. 



In Oregon it reaches its northern limit on Coos Bay, and is most abundant in 

 Coos and Curry counties on the western slopes of the foothills of the coast range.^ 

 It extends across the coast range to Camas valley in Douglas County, twenty-six 

 miles south-west of Roseburg, and goes farther inland in Josephine County, extending 

 to Love's Station, sixteen miles west of Grant's Pass, and to Selma and Waldo ; while 

 it appears to be scattered throughout the Siskiyou mountains between Oregon and 

 California. In California it extends southward as an unimportant component of the 

 Redwood belt on the coast as far south as Humboldt County,* and attains its most 

 inland point (a hundred miles from the coast) on the southern slopes of Mount 

 Shasta, at the headwaters of the Sacramento river. 



This cypress nowhere forms pure woods, but is always scattered through 

 the forest singly or in small groups, though near Port Orford it is very 

 abundant, and in some places forms 25 per cent of the mixed forest of 

 Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, hemlock, and Thuya. At Coquille, the most northerly 

 point where I saw this species, it occurs on the slopes of the low hills, on which 

 there is a luxuriant forest of enormous trees of several species, with a dense under- 

 wood of Acer circinatum and tall fern {Aspidium munitum), forming a scene like that 

 of the Redwood belt in California. Here the Lawson cypress is most prized on 



1 Mentioned as an entirely new plant in Card. Chrotu, 1873, p. 6. 



= Figured by Earl Annesley, Beautiful Trees, 52 (1903). 



3 Sargent in Card. Chron. xvi. 8 (1881), estimated that the belt in which this tree occurs most abundantly from north of 

 the mouth of the Coquille river southward, about twenty miles long and twelve miles wide, contained 200,000 million feet, 

 board measure, and speaks of the immense destruction of Port Orford cedar by a forest fire some years previously, which r^ed 

 tor three months in the vicinity of Coos Bay. 



* Mr. Henry Melde of Eureka says that trees 75 to 100 ft. high occur along the gulches of the Mad river in Humboldt 

 County {.Erytkea, v. 99 (1897)). 



