Pine - Arizona Blue Cypress

The Arizona Cypress is a stunning evergreen tree known for its tall and slender form. With silvery-blue to gray-green scale-like leaves, it adds a unique touch to your landscape. This resilient tree is an ideal choice for gardens, privacy screens, and windbreaks.  This is a signature tree of upland Arizona woodlands below the Ponderosa pine forests. It can reach a mature height of 40 to 60 feet with a width of 15 to 20 feet. Trunk diameter is from about 1 foot to 1½ feet across. If you plan to create a screen with this tree, plant at least 7 feet apart. 

Arizona cypress is generally not thought of as a landscape plant for the "desert". However, it does quite well in Phoenix, and grows well as a landscape tree along the west coast, and throughout the southwest and southeast United States.  Infrequent watering but regular deep summer irrigations are needed.  Widely tolerant of acid to alkaline soils.  The bark is very always attractive, shredding and peeling in long strips to reveal gray and reddish brown patches.  The oldest documented tree currently alive on the ASU campus is an Arizona cypress that was planted in 1910 by James Carter.

Scientific name:  Cupressus Arizonica