Silvicultural Notes on the White Cedar/ 



FORM AND DEVELOPMENT. 



White Cedar grows in very dense stands and has in conse- 

 quence a short, narrow crown and a long, clear, straight bole. 

 Small pin branches are often scattered over the stem, but they 

 do not seriously affect the quality of the wood. The length of 

 the green crown is as a rule one-fourth to one-third the total 

 length of the tree. The oldest timber studied was about eighty 

 years old, at which age it attains a maximum diameter of fifteen 

 inches and a height of seventy feet. One very old unsound 

 specimen was measured which had a diameter of thirty inches 

 at breast-height and was about seventy feet high. In early 

 youth a tap-root is developed, but in later life the tree has a 

 fiat root system, with strong superficial lateral roots. 



SITUATION AND SOIL. 



The White Cedar is fastidious. It is strictly a swamp tree, 

 and the boundaries of its distribution usually coincide exactly 

 with the edges of swamps, although a few short and scrubby 

 stragglers are found on dry ground. In some cases where a 

 Cedar swamp runs into a Pine swamp the cedar mingles with 

 the Pine and finally runs out where the ground is too dry for it 

 to grow. 



Cedar swamps are often classified as wet and dry. In the former 

 there is standing water, a very large amount of sphagnum moss 

 and usually little or no Pine. As a rule the timber is less dense, 

 and it is said to attain smaller dimensions and to be poorer in 

 quality than that growing in dry swamps. In both cases there 

 is a mud bottom, but in dry swamps interlacing Cedar roots 

 cover it with a complete crust. The drier the swamp the 

 greater the proportion of .Pitch Pine. A hard-bottom swamp is 



* By Gifford Pinchot, trom ihe Annual Report of the Siate Geologist for 1898. 



(131) 



