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
A tree 30°—70° high, with a trunk 18′—24′ or rarely 5° in diameter,
erect branches forming a rather compact conical head. Bark of the trunk
and large branches thin, smooth, dark reddish brown, separating into
small curled scale-like plates, becoming on old trees dark gray and
fibrous. Wood heavy, hard, pale straw color with lighter-colored
sapwood, durable in contact with the ground, somewhat used for
fence-posts, corral-piles, mine-timbers and in log cabins.
Distribution. Gravelly slopes and moist gulches often in groups of
considerable size at altitudes between 4000° and 7000°, Arizona; near
Camp Verde, Tonto Basin; Natural Bridge, Payson, etc.; on the Chiracahua
Mountains (_J. W. Toumey_, July, 1894); on the Santa Rita and Santa
Catalina Mountains, and in Oak Creek Cañon twenty miles south of
Flagstaff (_P. Lowell_, June, 1911).
Now often cultivated in western Europe as _C. arizonica_.
12. CHAMÆCYPARIS.
Tall resinous pyramidal trees, with thin scaly or deeply furrowed bark,
nodding leading shoots, spreading branches, flattened, often deciduous
or ultimately terete branchlets 2-ranked in one horizontal plane, pale
fragrant durable heartwood, thin nearly white sapwood, and naked buds.
Leaves scale-like, ovate, acuminate, with slender spreading or appressed
tips, opposite in pairs, becoming brown and woody before falling, on
vigorous sterile branches and young plants needle-shaped or
linear-lanceolate and spreading. Flowers minute, monœcious, terminal,
the two sexes on separate branchlets; the male oblong, of numerous
decussate stamens, with short filaments enlarged into ovate connectives
decreasing in size from below upward and bearing usually 2 pendulous
globose anther-cells; the female subglobose, composed of usually 6
decussate peltate scales bearing at the base of the ovuliferous scales
2—5 erect bottle-shaped ovules. Fruit an erect globose cone maturing at
the end of the first season, surrounded at the base by the sterile lower
scales of the flowers, and formed by the enlargement of the
ovule-bearing scales, abruptly dilated, club-shaped and flattened at the
apex, bearing the remnants of the flower-scales as short prominent
points or knobs; persistent on the branches after the escape of the
seeds. Seeds 1—5, erect on the slender stalk-like base of the scale,
subcylindric and slightly compressed; seed-coat of 2 layers, the outer
thin and membranaceous, the inner thicker and crustaceous, produced into
broad lateral wings; cotyledons 2, longer than the superior radicle.
Chamæcyparis is confined to the Atlantic and Pacific coast regions of
North America, and to Japan and Formosa. Six species are distinguished.
Of exotic species the Japanese Retinosporas, _Chamæcyparis obtusa_
Endl., and _Chamæcyparis pisifera_ Endl., with their numerous abnormal
forms are familiar garden plants in all temperate regions.
_Chamæcyparis_ is from χαµαί, on the ground, and κυπάρισσος, cypress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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