WESTERN JUNIPER (_Juniperus occidentalis_) is a high mountain tree with all the characteristics belonging to that class of timber. The trunks are short and strong, the limbs wide-spreading, the wood of slow growth, and dense. The tree attains a diameter of ten inches in about 130 years. Trunks ten feet in diameter have been reported, but trees that large would be hard to find now. John Muir said that the western juniper lives 2,000 years, and that the tree is never uprooted by wind. The trunk is usually short, six or eight feet being a fair average, and very knotty. However, when a block of clear wood is found, it is high class, the heaviest of the cedars, straight grain, soft, compact, brittle. The summerwood is so narrow that it resembles a fine, black line. The medullary rays are numerous and very obscure. The wood is slightly aromatic, splits easily, works nicely, and in color is brown, tinged with red. In appearance, the sapwood suggests spruce. The average height of the trees is from twenty-five to forty-five feet, diameter two to four feet. The range of this tree is in Idaho, eastern Oregon, and through the Cascades and Sierras to southern California. It seldom occurs below an altitude of 6,000 feet, and ascends to 10,000 or more. On the highest summits it is deformed and stunted. Its fruit is eaten by Indians, and it furnishes fuel for mountain camps and ranches, timber for mines, and sometimes a little lumber. The crooked limbs and trunks are made into corral fences where better material cannot be had. The wood has been found suitable for lead pencils, but that of proper quality is too scarce to attract manufacturers. Other names for this tree are juniper cedar, yellow cedar, western cedar, western red cedar, and western juniper. Some of these names are applied to other species of the same region. [Illustration] PORT ORFORD CEDAR [Illustration: PORT ORFORD CEDAR] PORT ORFORD CEDAR (_Chamæcyparis Lawsoniana_)