Cupressus funebris mourning cypress

Male and female cones of Cupressus funebris on Palm Drive. Sairus Patel, 23 May 2019

Cupressus funebris seed cone and branchlet. From An Illustrated Manual of Pacific Coast Trees, Howard E. McMinn & Evelyn Maino

This cypress has its leaves arranged in flattened hands that droop noticeably. The cones are very small, ½ inch or so in diameter.

There is a double-trunked one on the west side of Palm Drive, about 40 yards from the intersection with Arboretum Road as you walk south, on the street side of the chain and bollard barrier and very close to the footpath. Another individual on Campus Drive near the Cantor Center is located on the Cantor Center tree map (UTM 10S 0573448 4143169).

On the east side of the Arizona Garden there is a row of old specimens that were planted soon after seeds were brought back to Europe from China; the Dudley Herbarium, a Stanford collection relocated to the California Academy of Sciences in the 1976, contains vouchers deposited in 1896. For the history of the herbarium, which was previously upstairs in the south wing of the Stanford Museum, and the generations of indefatigable plant collectors associated with it, see an article by Sara Timby in the Fall 1998 issue of the Historical Society’s Sandstone & Tile.

Name derivation: Cupressus – classical Latin name for C. sempervirens; funebris – funereal.