Cupressus torulosa

Preferred Conditions: Free draining mountain slopes, a wide range of soils types, including lightly alkaline soils.

Tolerances: Mild tolerance to dry periods, poor tolerance to prolonged drought. Very prone to Armillaria (Honey Fungus) in our urban areas; avoid damage to roots or excessive watering.

Useful Life Expectancy (ULE): Long in its home range. This type of tree is often short lived in our urban landscape; it is mostly planted as a screen on boundaries; it is either lopped or removed once it outgrows confined position.

Significance: Grown as a screen to school, on west boundary, on Stead Street.

Flowering Characteristics: Indistinct, male parts are at foliage tips and yellow in colour while shedding pollen.

Features: Foliage is green, though a dull shade; held on stems that sweep upwards, with the foliage tips tending to droop. Giving this tree is soft appearance.

This type of tree, like most conifers it has no dormant buds on old wood, they are all stored in their foliage. Any pruning must retain foliage on branches to prevent those branches from dying and leaving dead patches of canopies, never to regrow. This makes hedging or hard pruning of this type of tree impossible.

Cones are small and green initially, they become brown as they mature and are held back from the tips of branches, 7-12mm in diameter.

This type of tree retains its deadwood for many years. In urban Melbourne, such trees are a favorite nesting tree for possums, though they do not consume its foliage. They prefer its dense canopy and dry internal nesting positions. This type of tree is often lopped to prevent them from exceeding 10 metres in height; this is futile, as they will continue to re-shoot skywards after lopping.