Flora of New Zealand Series

Port Jackson pine

Dense tree 3-10-(15) m high, but usually much smaller. Bark dark and smooth. Ultimate branchlets very slender; shoots obscured by decurrent lvs. Juvenile lvs < 10 mm long, green. Adult lvs scale-like, ovate, green, decurrent; keel prominent, rounded or obtuse; apex free, acute. ♂ strobili 1-1.5 mm long, broad-ellipsoid; scales with papery brown margins at maturity. Mature ♀ cones 1-6, 7-12 mm diam. before dehiscence, ± globose; peduncles stout. Scales 6, thick, broadly rhomboid, the outer ones c. 1/2 length of others and more tapering towards apex; boss in upper ⅓ of scale, short and broadly conic or rhomboid; apex mucronate. Central column short. Seeds many, dark brown. Cones persisting for several years after dehiscence and sometimes enlarging in that time.

N.: N. Auckland (Silverdale), Auckland (Waitakere Ranges).

S.E. and S. Australia 1935

Freely regenerating from original plantings, in N. Auckland with Leptospermum on old kauri gumland.

Port Jackson pine or cypress pine is the only Callitris sp. commonly cultivated in N.Z. It is grown as an ornamental, mainly in the North Id.

The sp. has sometimes been known in N.Z. as C. cupressiformis.