| Incense-cedar | |
|---|---|
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| Calocedrus decurrens California incense cedar | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Tracheophytes |
| Clade: | Gymnospermae |
| Division: | Pinophyta |
| Class: | Pinopsida |
| Order: | Cupressales |
| Family: | Cupressaceae |
| Subfamily: | Cupressoideae |
| Genus: | Calocedrus Kurz |
| Type species | |
| Calocedrus macrolepis | |
| Synonyms[1] | |
|
Heyderia K.Koch 1873 non Link 1833 | |
Calocedrus, the incense cedar (alternatively spelled incense-cedar), is a genus of coniferous trees in the cypress family Cupressaceae first described as a genus in 1873.[2][3] Three species are native to eastern Asia and one to western North America.[1]
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Green and Gold Grove
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Libocedro en el Real Jardín Botánico, CSIC
Transcription
As we take down the nostalgic Building 52 - the Spider Building, the Octopus Building, whatever you want to call it - we have a lot of real estate that opens up. And that's Centennial Park. The Green & Gold Grove is to honor our donors, and I really understand why we would want to locate that in Centennial Park. One of the things I hope donors will see as they go to Centennial Park and the Green & Gold Grove is that it's not just a place of beauty, not just a place to honor them, but it's also an educational place. We have people from agriculture, people from biological science, that are picking the trees that are going into Green & Gold Grove, so that these things will be educational to students. The idea of the Green & Gold Grove is to have a collection of rare and interesting trees at the center of campus. The look is a combination of trees that are golden and trees that are dark green, and the trees that we've chosen to be the dark green trees are some rare conifers that the students have been growing for the past three or four years now. We have a tree that was recently discovered actually. It was discovered in 1995 outside of Sydney, Australia. We were able to get a small one and the students have been growing over several years now and now it's in a big box and it will be a beautiful tree in the grove. The students have been great. They're so hard-working, first of all, and once they get interested in a project and they want to see it through and they want to see it happen, they're always so impressive in that sense. Working with the treeskind of gives me a chance to get outside and get away from that classroom setting. Dr. Ritter gives me a lot of freedom and a lot of responsibility just going out and doing whatever I can to make the conservatory the best that it can be. I'm personally responsible to keep these trees alive and to have them make it there to the site and to be planted. These are some specimens that can live up to a thousand years. So in a thousand years hopefully someone will say, "My great great great great grandfather helped plant this tree." So... pretty cool stuff. These trees are really cool since there are so many different varieties and they look so different from regular conifers. I'll be working out here, weeding and cleaning up, and people from the public will walk down through the plant shop and come this way and will say, "What is this tree?" And I go, "Oh, it's a rare conifer. It's recently discovered, and it's actually a living fossil." And they'll be really surprised. You see moments in your teaching career where a student...where the lightbulb comes on, where the student gets it or something like that happens. And on this project I've seen that happen so many times. The most interesting specimen I've worked with is a rare cedar, scientific name calocedrus rupestris. The other day Dr. Ritter was telling us about this and he said, "Everyone huddle around, and stick your head in, and take a look at this closely." And at each node it branches four times, and that's not very common in nature. I have a very special place in my heart for rare trees, and for me to be able to see these come on to this campus is just awesome. The Learn by Doing approach is very special here. It's something that most universities would not put money into. It's an expensive way to teach! With the laboratories, the undergraduate research, it's an expensive way to educate. But Cal Poly does that. Yeah, I may be biased, but I believe that other universities are not giving these types of experiences to students. This grove will encompass everything that Cal Poly is known for, and that's Learn by Doing.
Description
The genus is related to Thuja, and has similar overlapping scale-leaves. Calocedrus differs from Thuja in the scale leaves being in apparent whorls of four (actually opposite decussate pairs like Thuja, but not evenly spaced apart as in Thuja, instead with the successive pairs closely then distantly spaced), and in the cones having just 2–3 pairs of moderately thin, erect scales, rather than 4–6 pairs of very thin scales in Thuja.
Taxonomy
The generic name Calocedrus means "beautiful cedar".
Cladogram showing the evolutionary relationships:
| Stull et al. 2021[4][5] | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Species
Extant species
| Image | Name | Description | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
Calocedrus decurrens, California incense cedar (syn. Libocedrus decurrens) | It is a large tree, typically reaching heights of 40–60 m and a trunk diameter of up to 3 m (maxima, 69 m tall and 3.9 m diameter), and with a broad conic crown of spreading branches. The leaves are bright green on both sides of the shoots, and the cones 2–2.5 cm long. It is by far the most widely known species in the genus, and is often simply called "incense cedar" without the regional qualifier. | western North America |
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Calocedrus formosana, Taiwan incense cedar | It is very similar to C. macrolepis, and some botanists treat it as a variety of that, C. macrolepis var. formosana. It is a medium-sized tree, growing to 25–30 m tall, and is rare in the wild, occurring only as scattered trees in mixed forests. The leaves are glaucous green on the upper side of the shoots, and conspicuously marked with bright white stomatal patches on the underside. The cones are 1.5–2 cm long, carried on a 1–1.5 cm stem.[6] | Taiwan |
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Calocedrus macrolepis, Chinese incense cedar | It is also a medium-size tree to 25–30 m tall, and like C. formosana, is rare in the wild. The leaves and cones are similar to C. formosana, differing most obviously in the shorter cone stem, only 0.5 cm long.[7] | southwest China (from Guangdong west to Yunnan), and also in northern Vietnam, northern Laos, extreme northern Thailand and northeastern Myanmar |
| Calocedrus rupestris | The most recently discovered living species of Calocedrus, first described in 2004. It occurs exclusively on rocky limestone (karst) terrain, a habitat that has a very high level of endemism. The close proximity of these populations to the Chinese and Laotian borders indicates that the species may occur in those countries as well. It is an evergreen, monoecious tree up to 25 m tall with a broadly rounded crown. The epithet "rupestris" means "rock-dwelling".[8][9] | Vietnam |
Extinct species
| Name | Description | Distribution |
|---|---|---|
| †Calocedrus huashanensis | Described in 2012. It is known from compression fossils found in the Oligocene age Ningming Formation of southern China. Calocedrus huashanensis is known from branches and leaves. | southern China |
| †Calocedrus suleticensis | known from fossils found in the Early Oligocene of Probostov (Holy Kluk Hill) in the volcanic complex of the Ceske stredohori Mts., Bohemia. Calocedrus suleticensis is known from a cone. | Czech Republic |
Uses
Archery
Incense cedar was one of the favored varieties of wood used to make bows by Native Americans in California. Like juniper, and Pacific yew, the other two coveted bow woods among Pacific Natives, this wood has excellent flexibility and compression strength-weight ratio. When backed with sinew, it produces extremely flexible, fast, hard-hitting bows, which are rivaled only by horn-sinew composite bows for their ability to store and release elastic energy. The archer Saxton Pope observed that Ishi used this wood to produce short bows.[10]
Lumber
The wood of Calocedrus is soft, moderately decay-resistant, and with a strong spicy-resinous fragrance. That of C. decurrens is the primary material for wooden pencils, because it is soft and tends to sharpen easily without forming splinters. The two Asian species were (at least in the past) in very high demand for coffin manufacture in China, due to the scent of the wood and its decay resistance. It is likely that past over-exploitation is responsible for their current rarity.
Incense cedar was the preferred hearth board of the Native Peoples of Northern California for lighting fires by friction.
Cultivation
Calocedrus decurrens, the California incense cedar, is a popular ornamental tree, grown particularly in locations with cool summer climates like Britain, Washington and British Columbia. Its very narrow columnar crown in landscape settings, an unexplained consequence of the climatic conditions in these areas, is not shown by trees in their native 'wild' habitat. The California incense cedar is also valued for its drought tolerance. The Asian species are rarely cultivated.[11]
References
- ^ a b "Calocedrus". World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP). Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
- ^ Kurz, Wilhelm Sulpiz (1873). "On a few new plants from Yunan". Journal of Botany, British and Foreign. 11: 196. OCLC 1642195.
- ^ "Calocedrus Kurz". Tropicos. Missouri Botanical Garden.
- ^ Stull, Gregory W.; Qu, Xiao-Jian; Parins-Fukuchi, Caroline; Yang, Ying-Ying; Yang, Jun-Bo; Yang, Zhi-Yun; Hu, Yi; Ma, Hong; Soltis, Pamela S.; Soltis, Douglas E.; Li, De-Zhu; Smith, Stephen A.; Yi, Ting-Shuang; et al. (2021). "Gene duplications and phylogenomic conflict underlie major pulses of phenotypic evolution in gymnosperms". Nature Plants. 7 (8): 1015–1025. bioRxiv 10.1101/2021.03.13.435279. doi:10.1038/s41477-021-00964-4. PMID 34282286. S2CID 232282918.
- ^ Stull, Gregory W.; et al. (2021). "main.dated.supermatrix.tree.T9.tre". Figshare. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.14547354.v1.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ Fu, Liguo; Yu, Yong-fu; Adams, Robert P.; Farjon, Aljos. "Calocedrus macrolepis var. formosana". Flora of China. Vol. 4 – via eFloras.org, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO & Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA.
- ^ Fu, Liguo; Yu, Yong-fu; Adams, Robert P.; Farjon, Aljos. "Calocedrus macrolepis". Flora of China. Vol. 4 – via eFloras.org, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO & Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA.
- ^ Averyanov, H.T. Nguyen & L.K. Phan. Issues of Basic Research in Life Sciences with direction in upland agriculture and forestry. Proceedings, the 2004th [sic] National Conference on Life Sciences Thai Nguyen University, September 23, 2004 41–43, 1.
- ^ "Calocedrus rupestris". World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP). Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
- ^ "How Ishi made his bow and his method of shooting, from: Hunting with the Bow and Arrow by Saxton Pope, 1923". 11 February 2019.
- ^ Munz, P. A. 1974. Flora of Southern California 1–1086. University of California Press, Berkeley.
External links
| Authority control databases: National |
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This page was last edited on 23 December 2023, at 13:19