Athrotaxis cupressoides description

Athrotaxis cupressoides D.Don

Common Names

Pencil pine; smooth or little-leaf Athrotaxis (1).

Taxonomic notes

Syn: A. imbricata Maule ex Gord. (1).

Description

"A broadly columnar tree 6-15 m. tall, with ascending branches. Bark brownish-gray, slightly shreddy. Branchlets thick, somewhat fleshy, produced in whorls of 3. Leaves scale-like, dark green, closely imbricate, obtuse, 3-4 mm. long, keeled, with numerous microscopic stomata, margins translucent and denticulate. Male cone at tips of branchlets, globular, 3 mm. long, with 2-4 pollen sacs. Female cone produced on terminal side shoots, pendent, orange, globose, 0.5-1.5 cm. long by 0.6 cm. wide; scales thickened, with a flattened, small, triangular, recurved, apical umbo. Seeds with 2 even wings. Cotyledons 2, germination epigeal" (1).

Range

Australia: W. Tasmania; Launceston, Lake Saint Clair, 640-1067 m (1). "At the upper limit of tree growth in western Tasmania, often above the regional Eucalyptus timberline, are scattered stands of the endemic pencil pine. The stands occur beside tarns and on the damp shady backwalls of cirques, where the ice lingered in the waning phases of the last glacial period, and snow accumulates each winter. The regional hazard, fire, rarely penetrates these cool rainy heights and some of the trees are over a thousand years old... The old trees carry poor cone crops, seedlings are almost absent, and the distribution and structure of the populations suggest that regeneration is rare and periodic... I envisage pencil pine as a species expanding its range during the cold variable climate of Pleistocene Tasmania and currently 'sitting out' the Holocene in scattered stands above timberline. Such stands have been present throughout their current range on Mount Field for the last thousand years, but the altitudinal locus of regeneration appears to have shifted. Gradual migrations have occurred and local 'even-aged' stands developed. Great longevity allows the species to track environmental variability on a scale of centuries, regenerating mainly in those periods when favourable combinations of circumstances permit" (3).

Big Tree

Oldest

Over 1000 years (6, cited in 3).

Dendrochronology

Use of the species has been reviewed by Palmer, Ogden and Norton (3, 4, 5, 6).

Ethnobotany

Observations

Mount Field National Park looks to be a good place to find it in its timberline haunts.

Remarks

See also Paleobotany of Australia and New Zealand conifers. For a photograph, see p.6 in (2).

Citations

(1) Silba 1986.
(2) van Gelderen et al. 1986.
(3) Ogden 1985.
(4) Norton & Palmer 1992.
(5) Palmer & Ogden 1992.
(6) Ogden, J. 1978. Investigations of the dendrochronology of the genus Athrotaxis D. Don (Taxodiaceae) in Tasmania. Tree-Ring Bulletin 38: 1-13..