Manual of the Trees of North America (Exclusive of Mexico) 2nd ed.Sargent, Charles Sprague
Science
Manual of the Trees of North America (Exclusive of Mexico) 2nd ed.
Sargent, Charles Sprague
Trees -- North America
Often cultivated as an ornamental tree in western and central Europe,
where it grows rapidly and promises to attain a large size; hardy and
occasionally planted in the New England and middle Atlantic states.
10. THUJA L. Arbor-vitæ.
Resinous aromatic trees, with thin scaly bark, soft durable
straight-grained heartwood, thin nearly white sapwood, slender spreading
or erect branches, pyramidal heads, flattened lateral pendulous
branchlets disposed in one horizontal plane, forming a flat frond-like
spray and often finally deciduous, and naked buds. Leaves decussate,
scale-like, acute, stomatiferous on the back, on leading shoots
appressed or spreading, rounded or slightly keeled on the back, narrowed
into long slender points, on lateral branchlets much compressed in the
lateral ranks, prominently keeled and nearly covering those of the other
ranks; on seedling plants linear-lanceolate, acuminate, spreading or
reflexed. Flowers minute, monœcious, from buds formed the previous
autumn, terminal, solitary, the two sexes usually on different
branchlets; male ovoid, with 4—6 decussate filaments, enlarged into
suborbicular peltate connectives bearing on their inner face 2—4
subglobose anther-cells; female oblong, with 8—12 oblong acute scales
opposite in pairs, the ovuliferous scales at their base bearing usually
2 erect bottle-shaped ovules. Fruit an ovoid-oblong erect pale
cinnamon-brown cone maturing in one season, its scales thin (thick in
one species), leathery, oblong, acute, marked near the apex by the
thickened free border of the enlarged flower-scales, those of the 2 or 3
middle ranks largest and fertile. Seeds usually 2, erect on the base of
the scale, ovoid, acute, compressed, light chestnut-brown; seed-coat
membranaceous, produced except in one species into broad lateral wings
distinct at the apex; cotyledons 2, longer than the superior radicle.
Thuja is confined to northeastern and northwestern America, to Japan,
Korea and northern China. Five species are recognized. Of the exotic
species the Chinese _Thuja orientalis_, L., with many varieties produced
by cultivation, is frequently planted in the United States, especially
in the south and west, for the decoration of gardens, and is
distinguished from the other species by the thick umbonate scales of the
cone, only the 4 lower scales being fertile, and by the thick rounded
dark red-purple seeds without wings.
_Thuja_ is the classical name of some coniferous tree.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES.
Fruit with usually 4 fertile scales.
1. T. occidentalis (A).
Fruit with usually 6 fertile scales.
2. T. plicata (B, F, G).
1. Thuja occidentalis L. White Cedar. Arbor-vitæ.
[Illustration: Fig. 66]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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