Cupressus cashmeriana Carr.

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Cupressus cashmeriana' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/cupressus/cupressus-cashmeriana/). Accessed 2024-03-28.

Synonyms

  • C. funebris var. glauca Mast.

Glossary

glaucous
Grey-blue often from superficial layer of wax (bloom).
globose
globularSpherical or globe-shaped.
variety
(var.) Taxonomic rank (varietas) grouping variants of a species with relatively minor differentiation in a few characters but occurring as recognisable populations. Often loosely used for rare minor variants more usefully ranked as forms.

References

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Credits

Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles

Recommended citation
'Cupressus cashmeriana' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/cupressus/cupressus-cashmeriana/). Accessed 2024-03-28.

A fine example of this remarkable cypress grows in the Temperate House at Kew, but when tried out-of-doors in even a very sheltered place, it has never recovered from the effects of the first winter. Its spray is perfectly pendulous, very glaucous, and flat, the branchlets hanging vertically in two opposite ranks. Leaves intermediate in character between the juvenile and adult states of the true cypresses; they are only 116 to 112 in. long, but are not scale-like, and have free, somewhat spreading points. Cones about 12 in. diameter, globose; scales ten, with a triangular, hooked boss in the centre. This cypress is, no doubt, of Asiatic origin, but there appears to be no evidence that it is a native of Kashmir. Henry suggested it may be a juvenile state of C. torulosa. It is a tree of singular beauty both in form and colour. The finest tree in Europe is on Isola Madre, Lake Maggiore, Italy. Cones are freely borne by the tree at Kew, and young plants have been raised from the seed.

In the mildest parts it has proved tolerably hardy, but seems to need more summer heat than our climate can offer. The tallest example known is at Head-fort, Co. Meath, Eire; planted half a century ago it now measures 28 × 5 ft (1966). In Northern Ireland there is a specimen at Castlewellan measuring 22 × 134 ft (1966), planted in 1946.

From the Supplement (Vol. V)

The tree in the Temperate House at Kew had to be removed when the structure was renovated recently, but there is a propagation from it in the North Wing.

specimens: Mount Stewart, Co. Down, 34 × 312 ft (1976); Cockington Court, Torbay, Devon, 60 × 5 ft (1984); Headfort, Co. Meath, Eire, this tree attained 40 × 534 ft by 1980, but is now dead.

C. cashmeriana is now known to occur wild in one locality of Bhutan. There is no doubt that it is closely related to C. torulosa, under which it was placed as a variety by Kent in Veitch’s Manual of the Coniferae (1900). This is the status accepted for it by Silba.