338 PKACTICAL FOEESTET. 



Sequoia, we cannot but distrust them in other matters. But 

 such vagaries of authors are not confined to those of our times, 

 for even the revered Linnaeus reversed the generic names of 

 the Firs and Spruces, ignoring the classification of those who 

 had lived long before his time. The continental botanists and 

 nurserymen, however, have in most instances retained the older 

 classifications, placing the Spruces under the generic name of 

 Picea, and the Firs under Abies, while the English and most of 

 our American authors have followed Linnseus, although there 

 can be no question as to its inaccuracy. 



The North American Conif erse have been carefully elaborated 

 in the works of Drs. Gray, Chapman, Engelmann, and other 

 botanists, but our most comprehensive and best special treatise 

 on the coniferae, is " TheBookof Evergreens,"byJosiahHoopes. 

 This is a work that I can confidentially recommend to those 

 who may desu-e a more scientific description and classification 

 of either the indigenous or foreign species than will be given in 

 the following pages. Owing to the confusion referred to in 

 regard to the classification of our coniferae, I may in some in- 

 stances depart from the alphabetical arrangement of the pre- 

 ceding pages, and place the different genera in the order of 

 the relationship instead. 



JUNIPEEUS, Linn. — Juniper. 



An immense genus of evergreen trees and shrubs, and the 

 species widely distributed, and in almost every degree of lati- 

 tude, although principally in the Northern Hemisphere. The 

 wood of all the species is fine-grained, hard and durable, the 

 heart wood usually reddish and fragrant. Flowers dioecious or 

 sometimes monoecious, the small, solitary catkins, axiUary or 

 terminal, upon short lateral twigs. Fruit a scaly bracted drupe, 

 and in some species resembling a berry, more than a true cone, 

 usually emitting a strong resinous odor, and containing one to 

 three hard-sheUed seeds. Iicaves small, scale-like, persistent 

 and rigid. AU readily propagated by seeds or cuttings of the 

 small branchlets, also by layers and grafting. 



Janiperns Califomlca, Carr. — CaJifomia Juniper. — ^Leaves in 

 clusters of three, short, thick, and mostly acute. Fruit oblong- 

 ovate, of six or rarely four scales, usually one-seeded, and of a 

 reddish color when ripe. A smaU shrub, or sometimes a tree, 

 twenty to thirty feet high, with rather stout branches. Cali- 

 fornia, in the Coast Ranges, from the Sacramento River south- 

 ward to San Diego. 



