THE CEDARS, WHITE AND RED Beside the needle-leaved evergreens just de scribed, there are some trees we all know, that bear cones, and are evergreens, but their leaves are strangly different from those of pines, spruces, firs, and hemlocks. One of these is the familiar arbor vita, a conical tree, with flat leaf spray. Looking closely, one can make out the tiny, scale like leaves, arranged in opposite pairs, clasping the wiry stems, and covering them completely. These stems are flat, so that one pair of leaves has a sharp keel on the middle. The next pair is spread out flat. The keeled pair covers the edge of the stem. The flat pair covers the broader surface. These pairs alternate through the length of the stem, and an aromatic resin seals them close.
The cones of the arbor vita are small, and they have few scales, compared with the cones of the needle-leaved evergreens. Each year a crop is borne, with two seeds under each scale. Few of us see the little red cone flowers in May, nor the pellets of yellow on other twigs, which are the pollen flowers. We watch the hedge clipper at work, trimming the thick green fronds that make a solid wall of green. Look carefully hereafter for the flowers and the ripe cones, in the proper season for each.
The white cedar grows, a fine, conical ever green tree, in the coast states, from Maine to Mississippi. It loves best the deep swamps, but grows well in wet, sandy soil farther inland. Here we see again the flat spray of minute, pointed, and keeled leaves, but the cones are dif ferent. These are pale grey, and globular; the few scales are thick and horny, and curiously sculptured, each with a beak projecting from the centre.
The foliage mass is a peculiar blue-green, and the bark, thin, and rusty red, parts into strings and shreds.
Lumbermen call this tree a cedar. So they do the arbor vitae. The wood of each is pale coloured, and notable for its durability when exposed to weather and water. Fence posts of white cedar, and cedar pails, shingles, and the like, have a great reputation for durability.
The peculiarity of a red cedar is its fruit. Instead of a cone, a blue, juicy, sweet berry fol lows the blossoming of this tree. The foliage, too, is erratic. Minute leaves of the scale form, discovered in the other cedars, are found here on most twigs. They are still smaller, and the twigs are much smaller. But on new shoots, and often on a whole branch, the leaves are needle-like, one-half to three-quarters of an inch long, and spreading as the leaves of a spruce. The mass of the foliage is blue-green; these new ones are yellow-green. Among the branches hang these surprising berries! The truth is that the scales of the cone thicken, and become soft when ripe. They grow together, and the berry is, therefore, a cone, but much changed in its development from the cone on which the fruits of other evergreen trees are patterned.
We all know a red cedar tree by its tall, slim shape. The birds eat the berries, and scatter the seeds far and wide. The trees come up in irregular clumps in pastures and fence rows, and in rough, uncultivated land. They are pretty widely distributed in the eastern half of the United States.
The true name for this tree is juniper. That is the name by which all its related species are known. Red cedar is the lumberman's name for its wood, and this name, though not right, will probably stick to it always.
Red cedar chests and closets are believed to be moth-proof. The aromatic resin in the wood is supposed to be distasteful to the insects which are the pests of housekeepers. To put furs and woollen blankets and clothing into these chests does not always prevent their being moth-eaten. This many people have learned by sorrowful ex perience. We know the fragrance of this wood in pencils. Thousands of trees are cut every year to supply pencil factories. With the scarcity of these trees, other woods are being substituted.