Distribution. California: dry mountain slopes usually between altitudes of 1300° and 2300° in few widely isolated stations, Red Mountain, Mendocino County, to Mt. Tamalpais, Marin County; Cedar Mountain, Alameda County; Santa Cruz Mountains, Santa Cruz County; Santa Lucia Mountains, Monterey County; often covering great areas on the hills of Marin County with dense thickets only a few feet high.
Occasionally cultivated as C. Goveniana in western and southern Europe as an ornamental tree.
4. [Cupressus Macnabiana] A. Murr. Cypress.
Cupressus Bakeri Jeps.
Cupressus nevadensis Abrams.
Leaves acute or rounded at apex, rounded and conspicuously glandular on the back, deep green, often slightly glaucous, usually not more than 1/16′ long. Flowers in March and April, male nearly cylindric, obtuse, with broadly ovate rounded connectives: female subglobose, with broadly ovate scales short-pointed and rounded at apex. Fruit oblong, subsessile or raised on a slender stalk, ½′—1′ long, dark reddish brown more or less covered with a glaucous bloom, slightly puberulous, especially along the margins of the 6 or rarely 8 scales, their prominent bosses thin and recurved on the lower scales, and much thickened, conical, and more or less incurved on the upper scales; seeds dark chestnut-brown, usually rather less than 1/16′ long, with narrow wings.
A tree in Oregon occasionally 80° high with a tall trunk sometimes 3½° in diameter, southward rarely more than 30° high, with a short trunk 12′—15′ in diameter, slender branches covered with close smooth compact bark, bright purple after the falling of the leaves, soon becoming dark brown; more often a shrub with numerous stems 6°—12° tall forming a broad open irregular head. Bark thin, dark reddish brown, broken into brown flat ridges, and separating on the surface into elongated thin slightly attached long-persistent scales. Wood light, soft, very close-grained.
Distribution. Rare and local, usually in small groves; dry ridges of Mount Steve and adjacent mountains up to altitudes of 5300°, Josephine County, southwestern Oregon; California; on lava beds, southeastern Siskiyou and southwestern Mono Counties (C. Bakeri); dry hills and low slopes, Mt. Ætna, in central Napa County; through Lake County to Red Mountain on the east side of Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County; in Trinity County between Shasta and Whiskeytown; and on the Sierra Nevada (Red Hill, Piute Mountains near Bodfish) Kern County, at an altitude of 5000° (C. nevadensis).
Occasionally cultivated in western and southern Europe as an ornamental tree.