Evergreen cypress (Cupressus sempervirens)
Appearance: An evergreen coniferous tree that grows up to 30 m in height. A crown with the characteristic shape of a folded umbrella, usually very narrow and slender, pulled out into a thin tip, very rarely with decomposed branches.
The bark is also quite smooth on older trees, grey-brown, slightly cracked and furrowed.
Scaly pins, on the opposite cross, have about 1 mm in width, rounded front, very tight fitting, dark green, no distinct smell when rubbing. Male flowers to 8 mm in length, yellowish, appear singly at the ends of twigs. Female cones are spherical or slightly oblong, thickness up to 4 cm, consist of 4-7 discoid pairs, scales bent at the edge, having a small one in the middle, not very strongly marked thyroid button.
Habitat: Evergreen cypress likes dry soil, relatively shallow and rocky: it is quite sensitive to frost.
Occurrence: At home throughout the Mediterranean, native to northern Iran, Asia Minor, in Crete and Cyprus. Today it is rarely found in dense stands (Crete).
Flowering period: March.
General thoughts: Cypress wood was highly valued as a building material in ancient times, that is why the originally rich stands fell almost completely prey to the felling. Today there are almost only planted specimens.
Related species:
Large-fruited cypress (Cypress mcrocarpa) rather roundish, sometimes a flat crown, which only develops in older specimens. Scaly leaves extend to a clearly pointed end and have one dark gland, a little asymmetrically recessed. When rubbed, they smell very nice of lemon. Spherical female cones when mature, width 3-4 cm, they glow reddish-brown. Have 7-9 scales, with a thorn-shaped bead in the center. Originally only on the Monterey Peninsula in central California. More than once planted in the Atlantic Ocean in areas with warmer climates. May be crossed with the Nutcaya Cypress (Chamaecyparis noot-katensis) and then he gives as a hybrid of Cyp-Cypress Leyland.
Arizona cypress (Smooth cypress) it differs from the previous species, among other things, with its scaly bark. Besides, scaly. the closely fitting leaves are usually gray-green or even gray-blue in color and have a whitish gland; when rubbed, they give off a slight grapefruit smell. This tree is native to the western part of North America (Arizona), but in its various horticultural forms and varieties it is used as an ornamental tree. The Leyland cypress tree is the only known case, in which species of different genera can be successfully crossed with each other. Besides, in coniferous trees, even crossing of species of the same genus does not predict much success. Leyland cypress trees acquire a slightly different appearance depending on this, which species was used as the female parent form. If it was a Nutcai cypress, this is a tree with a rather loosely branched and irregularly positioned crown, slightly pinched ends of the twigs; this form was discovered in the year 1888 and is known under the trademark "Hag-gerston Gray."”. Otherwise - the trees have narrow crowns and the tips of the twigs spread flat and arranged in two rows.