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Cupressus sempervirens 'Glauca' (Italian Cypress) - This is a columnar evergreen tree that grows to 40 to 60 feet tall and up to about 8 to 12 feet wide with age and has scale-like leaves that are a blue-green color and 1-inch-wide round cones. It is a fastigiate selection of the broader growing species.
Plant in full sun. It is drought tolerant and considered to be cold hardy to around 5 degrees F. A useful plant for making a narrow hedge or used solitary or in small groups as specimen plantings. It is commonly thought of as a cemetery tree.
Cupressus sempervirens is native to a large area of the eastern Mediterranean region from northeast Libya in north Africa east through northern Egypt, western Syria, western Jordon, Israel and Lebanon and then north into southern Turkey and back to the west through southeast Greece (Crete, Rhodes) and Cyprus, with a disjunct population in the mountains of northern Iran. Though this plant has been widely cultivated as an ornamental tree for millennia and arrived in Italy in ancient times, the names "Italian cypress" or "Tuscan Cypress" commonly used are technically incorrect as it did not originate there.
The name for the genus comes from the Latin name for the Italian cypress tree Cupressus sempervirens and the name first published by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. The common name "cypress" comes via the Old French 'cipres' from the Latin cyparissus, which is the Latinization of the Greek kypárissos. In Greek mythology, Kyparissos was a boy beloved by Apollo who turns the boy into a cypress tree so his tears can fall forever after he accidentally kills his pet deer. The specific epithet means evergreen from the Latin words 'semper' meaning "always" and 'virens' meaning "flourishing", "living" or "green". This narrow form is also considered to be a selection of the form called sempervirens (as opposed to horizontalis) and is synonymous with Cupressus sempervirens ssp. fastigata.
We grew this useful plant from 1980 until 2023.
The information displayed on this page about Cupressus sempervirens 'Glauca' is based on our research conducted about this plant from books in our nursery library as well as from information that is provided by reliable online resources. We also have included our own observations made about it as it grew in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers when we had them in our nursery field. We also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.
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