THE MONTEREY CYPRESS.
Cupressus macrocarpa, Cord.
The Monterey cypress is now restricted to certain ocean facing bluffs about Monterey Bay in California. These trees are derelicts of their species. Wind-beaten into grotesqueness of form, unmatched in any other tree near the sea-level, their matted and gnarled branches make a flat and very irregular top above a short, thick, often bent and leaning trunk. Clusters of globular cones stud the twigs behind the leafy spray composed of thread like wiry twigs, entirely covered with scaly, four-ranked leaves.
In cultivation this cypress grows into a luxuriant, pyr amidal tree, often broadening and losing its symmetry, but redeeming it by the grace of its plume-like, outstretched branches. One by one the native cypresses on the crum bling bluffs will go down into Monterey Bay, for the undermining process is eating out their foundations. Wind and wave are slowly but surely sealing their doom. But the species is saved to a much wider territory.