Cupressus pygmæa Sarg.
Leaves acutely pointed, dark green. Flowers: male obscurely 4-angled, with broadly ovate peltate connectives: female with 6—10 ovate pointed scales. Fruit usually sessile, subglobose ¼′—⅞′ in diameter, its scales terminating in small bosses; seeds compressed, black, or dark brown, papillose, about ⅛′ long.
A tree rarely 75° high, with a tall trunk up to 2°10′ in diameter, often not more than 25° high, more often a shrub with numerous stems 1°—15° tall, ascending branches, and comparatively stout bright reddish brown branchlets, becoming purple and ultimately dark reddish brown; often beginning to produce fertile cones when only 1° or 2° tall. Bark bright reddish brown, about ¼′ thick, and divided by shallow fissures into flat ridges separating on the surface into long thread-like scales. Wood soft, very coarse-grained, pale reddish brown.
Distribution. California: pine barrens on the western slope of Point Pinos Ridge two miles west of Monterey, and on alkaline soil in a narrow belt beginning about three quarters of a mile from the shore of Mendocino County and extending inland for three or four miles from Ten Mile Run on the north to the Navarro River on the south; arborescent and also of its smallest size only in this northern station.
3. [Cupressus Sargentii] Jeps. Sargent’s Cypress.
Cupressus Goveniana Engelm., not Gord. (Silva N. Am. x. 107 t. 527)
Leaves obscurely glandular or without glands, dark green, pungently aromatic, 1/16′—⅛′ long, turning bright red-brown in drying and falling at the end of three or four years; on young plants ⅛′—¼′ long. Flowers: male with thin slightly erose connectives: female of 6 or 8 acute slightly spreading scales. Fruit often in crowded clusters, short-stalked, subglobose, ½′—1′ in diameter, reddish brown or purple, lustrous, puberulous, its 6 or 8 scales with broadly ovoid generally rounded and flattened and rarely short-obconic bosses; seeds brown, lustrous, often glaucous, with an acute margin, ⅙′ long, about 20 under each fertile scale.
A tree, shrub, or small bushy tree rarely more than 15° or 16° high, with a short trunk 2° in diameter, slender erect or spreading branches forming a handsome open head, and thin branchlets covered with close smooth bark, at first orange-colored, becoming bright reddish brown, and ultimately purple or dark brown. Bark ¼′—½′ thick, dark grayish brown, irregularly divided into narrow ridges covered with thin persistent oblong scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, light brown, with thick nearly white sapwood.