The needles are highly ornamental and remain blue throughout the winter.īlue Atlas Cedar is an open evergreen tree with a strong central leader and a stunning habit of growth which features almost oriental horizontally-tiered branches. It has attractive blue evergreen foliage. uconn.One of the most valuable landscape trees in the South, with a wide, spreading habit and silvery-blue needles, incredibly stately when mature leave a very large open space for this tree to reach its peak value in maturityīlue Atlas Cedar is primarily valued in the landscape for its characteristic tiered habit of growth.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cedrus libani subsp. : CS1 maint: archived copy as title ( link) ^ "RHS Plantfinder - Cedrus atlantica (Glauca Group) 'Glauca Pendula' ".^ "RHS Plantfinder - Cedrus atlantica (Glauca Group) 'Glauca' ".^ "RHS Plantfinder - Cedrus atlantica 'Aurea' ".Stromberg Archived August 31, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
Conifers of the World: The Complete Reference. Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands 11 (Supplement 2): 5–6. Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania, Greece. The genetic and taxonomic status of Cyprus cedar, Cedrus brevifolia (Hook.) Henry. ^ Qiao, C.-Y., Jin-Hua Ran, Yan Li and Xiao-Quan Wang (2007): Phylogeny and Biogeography of Cedrus (Pinaceae) Inferred from Sequences of Seven Paternal Chloroplast and Maternal Mitochondrial DNA Regions.^ GRIN Taxonomy for Plants Cedrus Archived at the Wayback Machine.The wooden structure was designed by the President himself, and is self-supporting so as not to cause damage to the tree. President Carter ordered a tree house built within the cedar for his daughter Amy. In the UK the following cultivars have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit (confirmed 2017): Īn Atlas cedar is planted at the White House South Lawn in Washington, DC. Many of the cultivated trees have glaucous (bluish) foliage, more downy shoots, and can have more leaves in each whorl young trees in cultivation often have more ascending branches than many cultivated C. The Atlas cedar is useful in cultivation because it is more tolerant of dry and hot conditions than most conifers. Also, fastigiate, pendulous, and golden-leaf forms are in cultivation. In garden settings, often the glaucous forms are planted as ornamental trees, distinguished as the Glauca group, a cultivar group. atlantica is common in cultivation as an ornamental tree in temperate climates. However, it is expected that it currently inhabits fewer than 15,000 hectares owing to extensive fires and human use.Īn old Cedrus atlantica tree in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco Landscape Ĭ. According to data from 1966 the species inhabited 23,000 hectares, forming forests around the Djurdjura Mountains in Kabylie and Aures Mountains. In Algeria, the Atlas cedar has been in significant decline. Recently massive reforestation campaigns have taken place in the region of Ifrane Province. The Rif mountains had one of the largest cedar forests in the past, but forests nowadays are much smaller, 15% of the total cedar forests in Morocco. Data that go back to 1927 show higher number of Atlas cedars (more than 150,000 hectares) in the Middle-Atlas mountains only. The species is in danger from human use, wood harvesting and fires. The current total area is around 163,000 hectares, of which around 115,000 hectares (80%) are situated in the Middle-Atlas mountains. Ĭurrently, Morocco has the highest total surface of Atlas cedar in the world, and it forms vast forests in the humid zones of the country, around the Middle-Atlas range, the oriental and Northern High-Atlas range, and in the Western and Central Rif mountain range. These forests can provide habitat for the endangered Barbary macaque ( Macaca sylvanus), a primate that had a prehistorically much wider distribution in northern Morocco and Algeria. Ecology Ītlas cedar form forests on mountainsides at 1,370 to 2,200 m (4,490 to 7,220 ft), often in pure forests, or mixed with Algerian fir - Abies numidica, Juniperus oxycedrus, holm oak - Quercus ilex, and Acer opalus. libani, but again with considerable overlap. The Cedrus atlantica leaf length (10–25 mm) is similar that of C.
libani), though with considerable overlap (all can be as short as 6 cm). The mean cone size tends to be somewhat smaller (although recorded to 12 cm, only rarely over 9 cm long, compared to up to 10 cm in C. It is very similar in all characters to the other varieties of Lebanon cedar differences are hard to discern. Fully grown, Atlas cedar is a large coniferous evergreen tree, 30 to 35 m (98 to 115 ft) (rarely 40 m) tall, with a trunk diameter of 1.5 to 2 m (4.9 to 6.6 ft).