Incense Cedar

(Calocedrus decurrens)

Incense Cedar (Calocedrus decurrens)

Identifying Characters: The flattened foliage, the unique shape and arrangement of leaf-scales, six cone scales, and the downward hang of the female cones are all distinctive for this species.

Similar Species: Incense Cedar is most like to be confused with Western Red Cedar. The characters given above will separate the two species. In addition the crown of Western Red Cedar is conical, but that of Incense Cedar is cylindrical.

Measurements: Incense Cedar is a large tree with a tapering trunk and a narrow columnar crown; height of mature trees 60 to 150 feet; diameter 3 to 5 feet at breast height.

Cones: Cones oblong, 0.75 to 1 inch in length, hanging down at the end of a slender stalk; color red-brown; cone composed of 6 cone scales in pairs, flat, elongate-ovate, and pointed at the tips.

Leaves: Leaves scale-like, elongate, and arranged in 4 distinctive rows; length 0.2 to 0.5 inches; side pair of scales keeled, long pointed, and overlapping the next pair; needles very aromatic when crushed; color shiny green.

Bark: Bark light brown or red-brown, deeply and irregularly furrowed into fibrous ridges that shred.

Native Range: Incense Cedar is a distinctive component of the Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forest, where it grows as scattered individuals or in small groups. Its range spans about 15° of latitude and a variety of climates from the southern slope of Mount Hood in Oregon, southward through the Siskiyou, Klamath, and Warner Mountains, Cascade and Coast Ranges, and Sierra Nevada to the dry Hanson Laguna and Sierra de San Pedro Martir Ranges in Baja California. Incense-cedar grows from the coastal fog belt eastward to the desert fringes. It can be found in the Washoe Mountains of west-central Nevada. (Silvics of North America. 1990. Agriculture Handbook 654.)

Habitat: Incense Cedar usually occurs as isolated individuals in the mountains mixed with other conifer species.