
Male flowers are 1/8-inch reddish brown terminal cones. They are green to bluish-green, and arranged in flat sprays. Flowers are not showy. It later develops gray, weathered strips. Leaves are evergreen and scale-like, and 1/16 to 1/8 inches long. Bark on the trunk is reddish brown and scaly when young. Roots are relatively shallow, and they may disrupt nearby sidewalks and driveways. The damaged branches pictured are due to a 10 inch snow fall one month prior. The thick branches also collect snow, and this often damages branches. The wind it catches also stresses the tree’s shallow roots to possibly uproot and topple the tree in wet weather. Branching is thick, catching wind as an effective windbreak. Branches reach upward, with flattened branchlets. An older tree will lose bottom branches, which makes it less effective as a privacy barrier. A 50-foot tall tree has a base that can spread 25 feet. The tree has a pyramidal to oblong form with a broad base that extends to the ground. Even in poor soil, it can grow 3 to 4 feet per year and reach heights of 60 to 70 feet.
#Nootka cypress lumber full#
The Leland cypress tree prefers full sun and well-drained, fertile soil. Since Leyland cypress cuttings first appeared in California in 1941, the tree has become one of the most popular and useful Christmas and landscape trees in the United States. Few hybrids of these trees are fertile, and nearly all the Leyland cypresses we encounter today are the result of cuttings from infertile trees. In the wild, these parent trees had been growing over 400 miles apart and had no chance to hybridize. In that year, on an estate in England, Monterey cypress trees from California hybridized with Nootka cypress trees from Alaska. The Leyland cypress tree, Cupressus x leylandii, did not exist before 1888. Successful plantings of Leyland cypress trees are usually the result of much research and careful thought. Where trees are not suitable, they may quickly overpower an area and/or prove to be high maintenance. These trees are appreciated for their function and enjoyed for their beauty when characteristics suit intended purposes. They are very popular for use as privacy hedges, ornamentals, and Christmas trees. This tree remains important to their culture.Leyland cypress trees can be seen wherever you go across the Southeastern United States. They fashioned its wood into paddles, masks, dishes and bows, and wove its bark into clothing and blankets. Nootka Sound is the ancestral land of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth.

Its species name nootkatensis refers to Nootka Sound from where it was first collected by botanists. The wood is light, hard, strong and decay-resistant. They complete their development and are shed in the fall of the second year after pollination. The seeds are small with 2 lateral wings. Its leaves are small and scalelike the cones are round (1 cm diameter), and the bracts (modified leaves) and scales (ovule-bearing structures) are fused.


The yellow cypress is a medium-sized tree, usually 20 to 40 m in height and 1.5 m in diameter. An example is the bald cypress found in swampy areas of the southeastern United States.

Other conifers also commonly called cypress belong to the genus Taxodium and are not native to Canada. The yellow cypress is also known as the yellow cedar but this is a misnomer as Canada's 2 species of cedar are in the genus Thuja. There is some dispute on the taxonomy of this species, with some authorities placing it in Cupressus and others arguing for returning it to an older name, Callitropsis nootkatensis, or including it in a new genus Xanthocyparis. The yellow cypress ( Chamaecyparis nootkatensis ) occurs in a narrow band from Alaska, along the BC coast and in the Cascade Mountains into northern California. At least 12 species are recognized worldwide occurring in warm, northern temperate regions. Shown with young cones (top), older cones (right) and male flowers (artwork by Claire Tremblay).\r\nĬypress is the common name for evergreen conifers of genus Cupressus of the cypress family (Cupressaceae). The yellow cypress is the only member of the cypress family in Canada.
