bases. After a few of these whorls lateral branches are given off, which sometimes bear a few acicular leaves at their bases. The lateral branches ramify and approach in character those of the adult plant, as the leaves are arranged decussately in 4 ranks. These leaves are variable, being acicular and loosely imbricated, or scale-like and closely imbricate. The branches are ascending, horizontal, or drooping, and are more or less flattened from above downwards.
History[1]
This tree was discovered by Née, who accompanied Malaspina in his voyage round the world during the years 1789 to 1794; and his specimen, gathered at Nootka Sound, is preserved in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. It was referred to by James Donn, in Hortus Cantab. ed. 4 (1807), as Thuya plicata, without any description; and subsequently D. Don drew up from it the oldest description of the species under the same name. The Thuya plicata of gardens, which was early in cultivation, is a variety of Thuya occidentalis, and has no connection with the plant of Née.
Archibald Menzies, who accompanied Vancouver's expedition as botanist, gathered specimens also at Nootka Sound in 1795. Nuttall received specimens later from the Flathead river, on which he founded his description of the species as Thuya gigantea. It was introduced into cultivation[2] in 1853 by W. Lobb, and distributed from Veitch's nursery at Exeter as Thuya Lobbi, as at that time Nuttall's name Thuya gigantea was wrongly applied to Libocedrus decurrens, and Don's name. Thuya plicata, in a similar erroneous way, had gone into common use for a variety of Thuya occidentalis. Afterwards the tree became generally known in England as Thuya gigantea; and it is unfortunate that Don's name, Thuya plicata, must, following the law of priority, be substituted for a name so well known and so established as gigantea. This change of name has, however, been adopted in the Kew Hand List of Conifers, and by Sudworth and Sargent in North America, and on the whole it is now most convenient to adopt the name Thuya plicata. (A.H.)
Distribution
This tree is, next to the Douglas fir, the most important from an economic point of view in northern Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.
It extends in the north as far as southern Alaska, in the east to the Coeur d'Alêne Mountains in Idaho and to north-western Montana, and in the south to Mendocino County in northern California. It is known as Cedar, or Red Cedar, and is found most abundantly on wet soils and in wet climates, ascending from sea level to an elevation, according to Sargent, of 6000 feet, where it becomes a low shrub.
- ↑ See Masters, in Gard. Chron. loc. cit.
- ↑ At the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, there were in 1884 five trees of supposed Thuya gigantea, which were raised, it was said, from seed sent to Edinburgh by Jeffrey in 1851, while collecting for the Oregon Association. Three of these trees, according to Nicholson, were true gigantea, the other two being what is now known as Thuya occidentalis, var. plicata. See Woods and Forests, Feb. 27, and Mar. 19, 1884. These trees cannot now be identified.
