A tree, often 200° high, with a trunk 3°—4° in diameter, frequently taller, with a trunk 10°—12° in diameter, but in the dry interior of the continent rarely more than 80°—100° high, with a trunk hardly exceeding 2°—3° in diameter, slender crowded branches densely clothed with long pendulous lateral branches, forming while the tree is young an open pyramid, soon deciduous from trees crowded in the forest, often leaving the trunk naked for two thirds of its length and surmounted by a comparatively small narrow head sometimes becoming flap-topped by the lengthening of the upper branches, and slender branchlets pubescent for three or four years, pale orange color and lustrous during their first season, becoming bright reddish brown and ultimately dark gray-brown. Winter-buds ovoid, acute, the terminal bud often ¼′ long and nearly twice as large as the lateral buds. Bark on young trees smooth, thin, rather lustrous, dark gray-brown, usually becoming on old trunks 10′—12′ thick, and divided into oblong plates broken into great broad rounded and irregularly connected ridges separating on the surface into small thick closely appressed dark red-brown scales. Wood light, red or yellow, with nearly white sapwood; very variable in density, quality, and in the thickness of the sapwood; largely manufactured into lumber in British Columbia, western Washington and Oregon, and used for all kinds of construction, fuel, railway-ties, and piles; known commercially as “Oregon pine.” The bark is sometimes used in tanning leather. Distribution. From about latitude 55° north in the Rocky Mountains and from the head of the Skeena River in the coast range, southward through all the Rocky Mountain system to the mountains of western Texas, southern New Mexico and Arizona, and of northern Mexico, and from the Big Horn and Laramie Ranges in Wyoming and from eastern base of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to the Pacific coast, but absent from the arid mountains in the great basin between the Wahsatch and the Sierra Nevada ranges and from the mountains of southern California; most abundant and of its largest size near the sea-level in the coast region of southern British Columbia and of Washington and Oregon, and on the western foothills of the Cascade Mountains; ascending on the California Sierras to elevations of 5500°, and on the mountains of Colorado to between 6000° and 11,000°, above the sea. Often planted for timber and ornament in temperate Europe, and for ornament in the eastern and northern states, where only the form from the interior of the continent flourishes. (_P. glauca Mayr._) 2. Pseudotsuga macrocarpa Mayr. Hemlock. [Illustration: Fig. 51]