Cupressus with ten or twelve species is confined to Pacific North America and Mexico in the New World and to southeastern Europe, southwestern Asia, the Himalayas, and China in the Old World. Of the exotic species _Cupressus sempervirens_ L., of southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia, and especially its pyramidal variety, are often planted for ornament in the south Atlantic and Pacific states.
_Cupressus_ is the classical name of the Cypress-tree.
Leaves dark green. Leaves eglandular or obscurely glandular on the back. Leaves obtusely pointed; cones puberulous, 1′—1½′ in diameter; seeds light chestnut-brown. 1. C. macrocarpa (G). Leaves acutely pointed; cones ½′—⅔′ in diameter; seeds dark brown or black. 2. C. Goveniana (G). Leaves glandular-pitted on the back, acute. Cones ⅔′—1′ in diameter; seeds brown, often glaucous. 3. C. Sargentii (G). Cones ½′—1′ in diameter, often covered with a glaucous bloom; seeds dark chestnut-brown. 4. C. Macnabiana (G). Leaves pale bluish green. Leaves obtusely pointed, with small gland-pits; bark of the trunk smooth, lustrous, mahogany brown; branches bright red. 5. C. guadaloupensis (G). Leaves acute, eglandular or occasionally obscurely glandular (in var. _glabra_ conspicuously glandular); bark of the trunk dark brown, separating into long narrow persistent fibres; branchlets gray. 6. C. arizonica (H).
1. Cupressus macrocarpa Gord. Monterey Cypress.
Leaves dark green, bluntly pointed, eglandular, and ¼′—½′ long; deciduous at the end of three or four years. Flowers opening late in February or early in March, yellow. Fruit clustered on short stout stems subglobose, slightly puberulous, 1′—1½′ in diameter, composed of 4 or 6 pairs of scales, with broadly ovoid thickened or occasionally on the upper scales subconical bosses, the scales of the upper and lower pairs being smaller than the others and sterile; seeds about 20 under each fertile scale, angled, light chestnut-brown, about 1/16′ long.
A tree, often 60°—70° high, with a short trunk 2°—3° or exceptionally 5°—6° in diameter, slender erect branches forming a narrow or broad bushy pyramidal head, becoming stout and spreading in old age into a broad flat-topped crown, and stout branchlets covered when the leaves fall at the end of three or four years with thin light or dark reddish brown bark separating into small papery scales. Bark ¾′—1′ thick and irregularly divided into broad flat connected ridges separating freely into narrow elongated thick persistent scales, dark red-brown on young stems and upper branches, becoming at last almost white on old and exposed trunks. Wood heavy, hard and strong, very durable, close-grained.