A tree, 50°—100° high, with a massive trunk 3°—6° in diameter, frequently free of branches for 50°, stout spreading branches forming a broad compact round-topped or conic head, and rigid branchlets coated when they first appear with bright golden-yellow scurfy scales, dark reddish brown and slightly scurfy during their first winter, and gradually growing darker in their second season; often much smaller and sometimes reduced to a shrub, 2°—12° high (var. _minor_ A. De Candolle). Winter-buds fully grown at mid-summer, usually crowded near the end of the branch, ovoid or subglobose, with broadly ovate apiculate thin and papery light brown scales slightly puberulous on the back, ciliate on the scarious often reflexed margins, the terminal about ¼′ long and broad and rather larger than the often stipitate axillary buds. Bark 1′—2′ thick and deeply divided into rounded ridges 2′—3′ wide, broken into thick plate-like scales, dark red-brown on the surface and bright red internally. Wood light, soft, close-grained, not strong, light brown tinged with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood of 50—60 layers of annual growth; occasionally used in the manufacture of ploughs and other agricultural implements. Distribution. Skamania County, Washington, valley of the lower Columbia River, Oregon, southward along the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains, and in California along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and through the coast ranges to the elevated valleys of the San Jacinto Mountains, sometimes ascending to altitudes of 4000° above the sea; of its largest size in the humid coast valleys of northern California. Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of temperate Europe. 4. LITHOCARPUS Bl. _Pasania_ Örst.