Cupressus glabra Sudw.
Differing from the type in the prominent oblong or circular glandular depressions on the backs of the leaves.
A tree 30°—70° high, with a trunk 18′—24′ or rarely 5° in diameter, erect branches forming a rather compact conical head. Bark of the trunk and large branches thin, smooth, dark reddish brown, separating into small curled scale-like plates, becoming on old trees dark gray and fibrous. Wood heavy, hard, pale straw color with lighter-colored sapwood, durable in contact with the ground, somewhat used for fence-posts, corral-piles, mine-timbers and in log cabins.
Distribution. Gravelly slopes and moist gulches often in groups of considerable size at altitudes between 4000° and 7000°, Arizona; near Camp Verde, Tonto Basin; Natural Bridge, Payson, etc.; on the Chiracahua Mountains (J. W. Toumey, July, 1894); on the Santa Rita and Santa Catalina Mountains, and in Oak Creek Cañon twenty miles south of Flagstaff (P. Lowell, June, 1911).
Now often cultivated in western Europe as C. arizonica.
12. CHAMÆCYPARIS.
Tall resinous pyramidal trees, with thin scaly or deeply furrowed bark, nodding leading shoots, spreading branches, flattened, often deciduous or ultimately terete branchlets 2-ranked in one horizontal plane, pale fragrant durable heartwood, thin nearly white sapwood, and naked buds. Leaves scale-like, ovate, acuminate, with slender spreading or appressed tips, opposite in pairs, becoming brown and woody before falling, on vigorous sterile branches and young plants needle-shaped or linear-lanceolate and spreading. Flowers minute, monœcious, terminal, the two sexes on separate branchlets; the male oblong, of numerous decussate stamens, with short filaments enlarged into ovate connectives decreasing in size from below upward and bearing usually 2 pendulous globose anther-cells; the female subglobose, composed of usually 6 decussate peltate scales bearing at the base of the ovuliferous scales 2—5 erect bottle-shaped ovules. Fruit an erect globose cone maturing at the end of the first season, surrounded at the base by the sterile lower scales of the flowers, and formed by the enlargement of the ovule-bearing scales, abruptly dilated, club-shaped and flattened at the apex, bearing the remnants of the flower-scales as short prominent points or knobs; persistent on the branches after the escape of the seeds. Seeds 1—5, erect on the slender stalk-like base of the scale, subcylindric and slightly compressed; seed-coat of 2 layers, the outer thin and membranaceous, the inner thicker and crustaceous, produced into broad lateral wings; cotyledons 2, longer than the superior radicle.
Chamæcyparis is confined to the Atlantic and Pacific coast regions of North America, and to Japan and Formosa. Six species are distinguished. Of exotic species the Japanese Retinosporas, Chamæcyparis obtusa Endl., and Chamæcyparis pisifera Endl., with their numerous abnormal forms are familiar garden plants in all temperate regions.
Chamæcyparis is from χαμαί, on the ground, and κυπάρισσος, cypress.