The Glasnevin Atlas Cedar

The Atlas Mountains cedar growing in Glasnevin is safer here than at home. Cedrus atlantica is native to a narrow band of mountains in Morocco and Algeria, and the IUCN now lists the species as Endangered in the wild, squeezed by drought, logging and a warming climate its native range cannot easily outrun. This specimen in the National Botanic Gardens has none of those problems, recorded by the Tree Council of Ireland's 2009 heritage survey among the garden's Exceptional Specimen Trees, likely somewhere between 120 and 165 years old by now. No second source describes this individual tree, so treat the age as a register estimate rather than a measured fact, honest as far as it goes. What the survey does record is form: a maiden tree, grown straight from seed rather than grafted, its blue green needles held in dense, upswept clusters along near-horizontal branches, the shape that made this species and its blue foliage varieties a favourite of formal Victorian planting schemes across Europe. Somewhere on a mountainside a few thousand kilometres south, its wild relatives are losing ground season by season. This one, planted decades before anyone worried about that, just keeps growing. It stands close to the Botanic Gardens' yew avenue, Addison's Walk, on the same afternoon's walk.