Smooth Cypress, Arizona Cypress, Smooth Arizona Cypress        ku-PRES-us GLAH-bra

• Evergreen tree, but may be shrub-like when subject to fires, dense, columnar with age, usually 20-40 ft (6-12 m) tall, sometimes less than 2 ft (0.6 m) wide but widens with age.  Outer bark continually flakes away, revealing the very attractive smooth, cherry-red inner bark.  Leaves are scale-like, 3 or 4 angeled in cross-section, 2-3 mm long, sharply acuminate, keeled, highly glaucous giving the foliage a blue-green cast, they are usually conspicuously dotted with tiny white flecks which are pitlike, resin glands.  Cones globose or oblong, about 2.5 cm, gray or brown, often glaucous at first, 3-4 pairs of scales, smooth or with scattered resin blisters.
• Sun.
• Hardy to USDA Zone 7      Smooth Arizona Cypress is native to the mountains of central Arizona.  The range of Arizona Cypress, Cupressus arizonica, extents from Arizona into Mexico and east to New Mexico and Texas and west to California.
• The species, Cupressus glabra (Cupressus arizonica), has been separated into as many as 5 varieties (var.), namely, arizonica, glabra, montanta, nevadensis and stephensonii.  The Flora of North America does not recognize any varieties, although all at one time were described as separate species.  The following is from the Flora of North America (www.efloras.org): Bark texture and foliage features have been used to distinguish geographic varieties or segregate species [of Cupressus arizonica].  Although bark texture may be consistent within populations, over the species as a whole there is complete intergradation between smooth and fibrous barks.  Jacobson (1996, p. 181) states the Smooth Arizona Cypress is usually grown under the names of Cupressus arizonica or Cupressus glabra, and almost never sold under Cupressus arizonica var. glabra.
• glabra: smooth, a reference to the bark.
• Salem, OR: Bush Prairie Park, east of Bush House.