San Francisco's Christmas tree has roots.
Photo: Marty Aligata (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Monterey Cypress
Cupressus macrocarpa
In the wild this tree grows on two headlands near Monterey in California and nowhere else on earth, together covering less than a square kilometre. We map 7 of them, in 6 cities.
The Lone Cypress grows out of a granite headland above Carmel Bay by itself, propped by a retaining wall and steel cables since the 1940s; it was probably seeded around 1750, close to the ceiling for its species, and the Pebble Beach Company has held a trademark on its drawing since 1919. The Old Veteran at Point Lobos has been painted since 1879. Give the species a mild wet winter anywhere and it grows fast and enormous, which is how it reached Italian and Portuguese gardens within a few decades of being described. Trieste's stands at Miramare, put in after 1856, and Lucca's on the San Regolo bastion of the city's Renaissance walls.
San Francisco
Lisbon
Monterey cypress has one of the smallest natural ranges of any conifer: two headlands on the California coast near Monterey, a few kilometres of cliff, and nothing else in the wild.
Lucca
In the wild this species grows in two small groves on a single stretch of Californian coast near Monterey and nowhere else on earth.
Florence
In the wild this species grows on two small headlands in California and nowhere else on earth.
Trieste
In the wild this species survives in two groves on the California coast, together covering less than a square kilometre, and it is listed as threatened.
Monterey
This tree is a registered trademark.
Photo: Ilya Grigorik (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Raymond Yelland painted this cypress in 1879, and he was early rather than first.
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