Plant of the Month

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Plant of the Month: April 2025

Kashmir Cypress

Cupressus cashmeriana Royle ex Carr. 1867

= C. Corneyana Knight & Perry ex Carr. 1855

= C. himalaica Silba

= C. pseudohimalaica Silba

= C. torulosa D. Don var. cashmeriana (Royle ex Carr.) Kent 1900

CUPRESSACEÆ; Cypress Family

This month's subject was not included in my book Trees of Seattle, 2nd edition 2005. It likely had not even been planted. But now, it has proved a success, so here is its story.

According to my book, Seattle has six species of Cupressus --exclusive of those known only at Washington Park Arboretum. Cupressus cashmeriana is the seventh. All Cupressus species are coniferous evergreen trees with cones more or less marble-sized, and shiny. As I view it, in a broad or lumping sense, genus Cupressus contains 32 species. Splitters shrink it to only 14 by making 17 New World Cupressus species Hesperocyparis, and making Alaska Cedar a Callitropsis.

The tree is native in mountainous NE India (Sikkim), and Bhutan. It is also called Bhutan Cypress. In the wild, it has been reported to attain 312 feet in height, with trunks to 11.5 feet thick. It has such thin, delicate twigs that it recalls a Chamæcyparis, and its cones are smaller than those of most Cupressus.

It varies in the wild as to how green or blue its foliage is, how frost-hardy it is, and how much the foliage hangs. People in Western gardens love to choose the bluer, weeping forms, and call them Bhutan Weeping Cypress. It is not native in the NW Himalaya region of Kashmir --despite its name cashmeriana. It was discovered in 1848 by William Griffith in Bhutan (East Himalaya), and was being cultivated in England before 1850. It might have not been grown in North America til 1951 or a bit before.

That said, scholars differ on whether there is one variable Bhutan cypress, or two. Lumpers such as Aljos Farjon assert that Cupressus cashmeriana includes diverse populations. Splitters such as Didier Maerki think it clear that Cupressus cashmeriana has long been confused with the similar and newly named (this year) Cupressus bhutanica Maerki (Märki). If I read rightly information published in the March 2025 Bulletin of the Cupressus Conservation Project, then the Seattle green, cold-hardy tree I here call Cupressus cashmeriana should be called Cupressus bhutanica. According to Maerki, Cupressus cashmeriana is a critically endangered Tibetan endemic, while Cupressus bhutanica grows only in East Bhutan.

The six photos below show the Seattle tree growing through the years 2008 through the present. The tree grows on the UW campus, by the Burke-Gilman Trail, east of the overpass to the Health Sciences complex. Now it is 45 feet tall. I know of a second specimen of Cupressus cashmeriana, in a Seattle garden, but too close to a house, so should be cut down; it was obtained from Forest Farm nursery of Oregon, and is nowhere near as large as the UW tree. I know a third small Seattle garden tree, invisble from the street; it came from Ian Barclay. I lack the time to compare closely foliage and cones of these three Seattle specimens; possibly they are not 100% identical. Washington Park Arboretum does not have one. Most people agree that the best selections of these weeping cypresses are attractive garden trees. In time, we will learn more about their relative merits as ornamental trees.

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