The Bhutan Cypress of Brisbane Street

This tree is on Hobart's significant tree register for one stated reason: its loss would be detrimental to the community. Not size, not age, not rarity. The Bhutan cypress at 67 Brisbane Street earned its place as a shape, a dark green cone running straight up out of the footpath, holding a vertical line on a street that otherwise runs horizontal. It is a long way from home. Cupressus torulosa grows wild in the dry inner valleys of the Himalaya, through northern India, Nepal and Bhutan, at altitudes that hand it thin air, hard sun and freezing nights, and across that range it is the tree planted around temples and monasteries. It is uncommon as a street tree in Australia, so the reason to walk past is simply that you are unlikely to meet another one on the way. The register carries no age for it and no measurements, and no other source names it at all. What you get is the council's judgement and your own eyes, which is honest ground for a tree whose whole case rests on how it looks from the pavement. It makes the smallest claim of any tree on this list and the claim holds: a Himalayan conifer, on an ordinary Hobart street, that a city looked at and decided it would rather not lose.