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Tree of the week: Incense cedar

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The (California) incense cedar -- Calocedrus decurrens

This narrow columnar evergreen with a manicured look stands out from the crowd with its flat sprays of tiny, bright, apple-green leaves, completely different in color from surrounding trees.

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The California native incense cedar, whose sap releases the odor of incense, is a great demonstration of how unique shades of green can be. This member of the cypress family grows best in the mountains from southern Oregon to Baja California. There it receives more water than in the Southland flatlands, but it is remarkably climate adapted and drought resistant. The incense cedar, which can live to 500 to 1,000 years, is best known as a good source for pencil wood.

Slow to start, an established incense cedar in the right environment may grow up to 2 feet a year to a dense, symmetrical, cone-shaped tree of 75 to 90 feet, but only 10 to 15 feet wide at the base in its native areas. In the garden it may reach only half that size.

Without other trees close by, the lower branches and leaves will hang on forever. In a shaded forest environment the trunk will be bare. There eventually the trunk may attain a diameter of 10 feet. Its fibrous and deeply fissured bark is orange brown.

Fine in sun or part shade and happy with many soils, in our lowlands the tree looks best with occasional summer watering. Tiny scale-like leaves, in whorls of four, cover twigs that grow as flattened sprays. Inconspicuous flowers are followed by small, hanging, yellowish brown cones that open like duck bills when ripe. No pruning is needed, and there are no root, litter or pest problems.

In the garden the incense cedar, formerly known as Libocedrus, is used for screens, hedges and windbreaks. It is well known to Northern European gardeners and our cool summer neighbors to the north, but it is less frequently used here. Columnaris and Compacta indicate the nature of these cultivars, while Aureovariegata has interspersed sprays of bright yellow foliage.

-- Pieter Severynen

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