Leaves standing out from all sides of the branches and often nearly at right angles to them, frequently bringing their white upper surface to view by a twist at their base, straight or slightly incurved, acute or acuminate with long callous tips, slightly rounded, green, lustrous, and occasionally marked on the lower surface with 2 or 3 rows of small conspicuous stomata on each side of the prominent midrib, flattened, obscurely ridged and almost covered with broad silvery white bands of numerous rows of stomata on the upper surface, ½′—1⅛′ long and 1/16′—1/12′ wide, mostly persistent 9—11 years. Flowers: male at the ends of the pendant lateral branchlets, dark red; female on rigid terminal shoots of the branches of the upper half of the tree, with nearly orbicular denticulate scales, often slightly truncate above and completely hidden by their elongated acuminate bracts. Fruit oblong-cylindric, short-stalked, yellow-green often tinged with dark red when fully grown, becoming lustrous and pale yellow or reddish brown, 2½′—4′ long, with thin stiff elliptic scales rounded toward the apex, denticulate above the middle, and nearly twice as long as their lanceolate denticulate bracts; deciduous mostly during their first autumn and winter; seeds full and rounded, acute at the base, pale reddish brown, about ⅛′ long, with narrow oblong slightly oblique wings ⅓′—½′ in length. A tree, usually about 100° high, with a conspicuously tapering trunk often 3°—4° in diameter above its strongly buttressed and much-enlarged base, occasionally 200° tall, with a trunk 15°—16° in diameter, horizontal branches forming an open loose pyramid and on older trees clothed with slender pendant lateral branches frequently 2°—3° long, and stout rigid glabrous branchlets pale green at first, becoming dark or light orange-brown during their first autumn and winter and finally dark gray-brown; at the extreme northwestern limits of its range occasionally reduced to a low shrub. Winter-buds ovoid, acute or conical, ¼′—½′ long, with pale chestnut-brown acute scales, often tipped with short points and more or less reflexed above the middle. Bark ¼′—½′ thick and broken on the surface into large thin loosely attached dark red-brown or on young trees sometimes bright cinnamon-red scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, straight-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thick nearly white sapwood; largely manufactured into lumber used in the interior finish of buildings, for fencing, boat-building, aeroplanes, cooperage, wooden-ware, and packing-cases. Distribution. Moist sandy, often swampy soil, or less frequently at the far north on wet rocky slopes, from the eastern end of Kadiak Island, southward through the coast region of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon to Mendocino County, California; in Washington, occasionally ranging inland to the upper valley of the Nesqually River.