Italian Cypress | Medium Tree Seedling

 

About Italian Cypress

From the tawny rolling hills of the Italian countryside to the famous canvasses of Van Gogh, the statuesque silhouette of the Italian Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) appears as an unmistakable exclamation mark of beauty and formality in landscapes throughout the world. Native to southern Europe, the eastern Mediterranean region, and Asia, these tall, narrow, supremely vertical trees have been sought out by landscapers for millennia. Sometimes called Mediterranean Cypress, Tuscan Cypress, Graveyard Cypress, or Pencil Pine, Italian Cypresses are commonly deployed as formal sentinels at entryways, as living walls along property lines, and as softening agents planted next to tall buildings and hard urban edges. Today, Italian Cypresses are among the tree world's most cosmopolitan citizens — growing virtually any place where winter temperatures remain above 10°F.

C. sempervirens is a medium-sized coniferous evergreen (growing up to 115 feet tall) with a conic crown, level branches, and variably loosely hanging branchlets. The foliage grows in dense sprays, dark green in color. The leaves are scale-like, 2 to 5mm long, and produced on rounded shoots. The seed cones are ovoid or oblong, 25 to 40mm long. The male cones are 3 to 5mm long, and release pollen in late winter. Cupressus sempervirens is soil tolerant, drought resistant, and can live up to 1,000 years.

Italian Cypress plays a prominent roll in almost all formal estate gardens, with its unrivaled ability to delineate space, and has been described as a “living pillar” for its tight, formal, upright, and narrow form. These trees require minimal space, occupying a very small planting footprint despite their considerable height. Usually growing to around 100 feet at maturity, Italian Cypresses can become taller, reaching up to 150 feet in height, but always retaining an extremely slender, orderly form. The tree can be more than ten times taller than it is wide. Generally, the tree’s spread remains 10 feet in diameter or less, no matter how tall it becomes.

Italian Cypress — a truly great species, and certainly one of the most fun for creative landscapers. Never buy just one!

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Seedling Size Chart: Medium

Due to the dynamic nature of actively growing trees, as well as the tremendous variation between species’ growth rates, we rely on the cubic volume of a seedling’s root mass to determine its “size” (Small / Medium / Large / XL). Within each size there is minor variance — the dimensions provided here represent the category minimum. If exact measurements are essential, please contact us about current stock.