LET’S KNOW SOME TREES C7 
cypresses except in size. The round cones in rows or groups along 
the branchlets mark them as cypresses, as does the foliage, with which 
we are all familiar in windbreaks and garden hedges. 
The Port Orford cedar (Lawson cypress) is one of the most 
beautiful evergreen trees to be found in the State. In California 
it is confined almost entirely to Humboldt County, although it occurs 
occasionally as far inland as the west base of Mount Shasta. The 
tiny leaves of its peculiarly flat branchlets are soft to the touch 
as compared with the leaves of the true cypresses. The tree is from 
125 to 180 feet high, 314 to 6 feet through; its quality as timber 
is excellent, but it occurs in such limited areas and in such small 
groups that it is not a large factor in the lumber business of the 
State. 
Then there are the spruces: The glorious Sitka spruce in low 
valleys facing the ocean, from the northwest borders of the State as 
far south as Mendocino, and the weeping spruce at higher elevations 
in the Siskiyous. These are both in a manner spilled over from 
Oregon, where they are at their best. We have the so-called big- 
cone spruce, too, from eastern Santa Barbara County south to the 
limits of the State. This was long considered a variety of the 
Douglas fir, which it much resembles except for its larger cones. 
Bigcone spruce is not a true spruce. It belongs to the genus of 
false hemlocks because of a resemblance in the formation of leaf 
stems and in the characteristics of the cones. Bigcone spruce is of 
value principally as “ protective cover ” for watersheds. 
The western hemlock from the North Pacific States, a large forest 
tree, is found in the coastal fog belt of California as far south as 
Marin County, and extending inland for 20 miles up to an elevation 
of 2,000 feet on the ocean side of the range. Its foliage is a glossy 
yellow green with small leaves not over an inch long, and the bark on 
the old trees is dark russet brown, deeply furrowed with narrow cross 
ridges. 
The rare mountain hemlock (fig. 14), when small, looks like the 
deodar or Himalaya cedar, so often planted in parks. The leaves 
grow in close tufts, and the oval cones, 1 to 2 inches long, have an 
exquisite purple bloom when young. 
The Pacific yew, with its small, deep, yellow-green leaves re- 
sembling a redwood, is occasionally found near streams in deep 
moist ravines and gulches in the Coast Range from Humboldt 
County as far south as Lake County and on the western slopes of 
the Sierra from Lassen to Tulare Counties. It is a small tree, 
usually not over 30 feet high, with a thin papery bark, and bright 
coral-red fruit that ripens in the fall. 
Nor must we forget our California nutmeg, that strange tree with 
the flat, shining, sharply pointed leaves whose keen odor has won it 
the name of “stinking cedar.” Its seed kernel suggests the nutmeg — 
of commerce, but the botanical affinities of our California tree are 
with yews and conifers rather than with magnolias and laurels, as 
1s the case with the East Indian nutmeg. The trunk, usually twisted 
or crooked, occasionally reaches a height of 80 feet, but is more often 
from 35 to 50 feet in height. The rather soft bark, with its finely 
checked seams, is green on the younger branches, but becomes yellow- 
ish as it gets old. Though found both on the west slopes of the 
