Description: Large evergreen tree with enlarged base, narrow, pointed, spire-like crown with drooping leader and horizontal or drooping branches.

Height: 20-50m

Diameter: 0.8-1.2m exceptionally to 3m

Leaves: opposite in 4 rows, 1.5mm long. Scale-like; dull green above, whitish beneath, with gland-dot.

Bark: reddish-brown, 10-20cm thick, deeply furrowed into long fibrous ridges. Oldest trees have coarse, vertical plates lifting away at the ends.

Twigs: very slender, flattened, regularly branched and spreading horizontally in fern-like spray.

Flowers: Most trees bear abundant flowers of each sex. Male flowers terminal on finest branchlets; 2 mm; slate-black scales edged white, becoming crimson at end of March when 5 mm long, shedding pollen in April then withering and falling off. Females terminal on small branchlets well behind tips of sprays; slate-blue, 5 mm, open in April and a few throughout the summer; turn green and globose as they mature.

Cones: 10 mm in diameter; many in clusters, reddish-brown, often with a bloom; with 8 or 10 blunt cone-scales; maturing in one season; two to four seeds under a cone-scale.

Habitat: Sandy and clay-loams, also rocky ridges; with other conifers, sometimes in pure stands. California plant communities North Coastal Conifer Forest (m10), Mixed Evergreen Forest (m19) and Douglas-Fir Forest (m13).

Range: SW Oregon and NW California in narrow coastal belt; also isolated inland populations at higher elevations in the Siskiyou mountains and on Mount Shasta; to 1500m.

Port-Orford Cedar is adapted to the humid climate of the Pacific coast with its wet winters and frequent summer fog. The names honour Port Orford, Oregon, located in the centre of its range, and Peter Lawson and his sons, Scottish nurserymen who introduced this species into cultivation in Edinburgh in 1854. Growth May-September. Young trees can make shoots to 80 cm, but over long periods, mean growth is not more than 30-45 cm per year. Biggest UK specimens c 40m. The wood is light, durable and fragrant; it contains an essential oil which was formerly used as a diuretic and is even effective if inhaled when working the wood.

Information: Audubon (1980), Lawrence (1985).

Source: Weasdale Nurseries, Newbiggin-on-Lune, Cumbria.

Purchased: 1993.03.22, by us, one specimen at 3-4 ft.

Planted: 1993.04.02, near western edge of US strip at B47G: Pacific Northwest Temperate Rainforest zone.

Progress: looking very healthy, and reached 2.8 m on 1998.10.07 (not including about 0.2m of drooping leader). Awaiting effort to measure it again in 2002 - they get harder as they get bigger :-) The next great measuring and recording spree actually took place 2004.09.27 and this tree is spreading at the base making it quite hard to measure. My initial estimate is 4.3m but the drooping leader adds to this, and this may be something of an underestimate.

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