Fig. 129. Arbor Vitæ
67. White Cedar. The real white cedar has a more delicate leaf and is fond of cool swamps.
It has a conical shape and is much larger than the arbor vitæ, reaching sometimes ninety feet. The wood is very valuable, being soft but durable, and is used for shingles, posts, and boats. It has the property of enduring the changes such as posts or other structural members are obliged to withstand in contact with the soil, and ranks next to yellow locust in this particular.
68. Red Cedar is the tree which supplies our lead pencils. It is remarkable for its straight, even grain, and the ease with which it can be worked. This is the familiar tree of our roadside, where the birds who feast on the cedar berries have stood on the fence rails and unconsciously planted rows of cedars for future generations by dropping the seeds on the ground.
Fig. 130. Red Cedar growing along Roadside from Seed dropped by Birds
The red cedar seems to grow where other trees cannot exist, but like other trees responds to good treatment and reaches its best development in the balmy and luxuriant South.
It is found from Maine to Florida and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In the North it rarely grows over twenty feet high, and is of compact growth, but in Florida it reaches eighty feet.
The leaves are remarkable in that there are two shapes, the sharp or awl-shaped, and the scale-shaped, growing upon the same branch.
The wood is valuable for many purposes and has been used so extensively that it is becoming scarce.