Cupressus sempervirens L.
Ang.: Mediterranean cypress. Spa.: Ciprés común. Fre.: Cyprès commun, cyprès sempervirent. Ara.: Cerual, seruel, ceru, çaru, sro, blinz, çaed, bestana, hiyat. Tam.: Tiddi, irz, arar (last two also applicable to Juniperus sp. and Thuja sp.).
Evergreen tree, monoecious, up to 40 m in height, highly variable in shape but always ± conical. Trunk straight up to 1 m in diameter, greyish-brown bark, fibrous and longitudinally striated. Various forms have been described according to the shape: in f. stricta (Aiton) Rehder (C. pyramidalis Targ., C. fastigiata DC.) the branches arise from the trunk at an acute angle, forming a very long and narrow conical crown; in f. numidica Trab. the branches arise from the trunk at a right angle, then rise forming a wide conical crown; and in f. horizontalis (Miller) Voss (C. horizontalis Miller) branches appear fully extended, forming a conical crown much wider and ungainly. Branchlets covered in squamiform, very oppressed, triangular, very small leaves (0.5-1 mm), green in colour. Male cones ovoid-cylindrical (4-8 mm), born solitary at the end of the branchlets. Female cones or strobili ovoid-elliptical (2.5-4 cm) brown-grey in colour, with 8 to 14 peltate scales with a central blunt mucro. Seeds flattened with a narrow wing.
Flowering:
In spring, although it is not rare for some specimens to flower outside of this season.
Fruiting:
In the autumn of following year. Dehiscence may occur one or several years later.
Habitat:
Dry and sunny terrain of the lower mountain, from almost sea level to about 900 m, where it forms pure or mixed forests with Pinus halepensis, Quercus rotundifolia, Q. coccifera and other thermophilic and mesophilic species. Taking into account the few trees that have survived long centuries of fires, logging and clearings, it is difficult to establish what their optimum habitat would be. Maire, in Cyrenaica, and Pottier-Alapetite, in the Tunisian Dorsal, point out that while other tree species such as pines become extinct on the slopes, the cypresses preferentially occupy the bottom of the valleys, but in our visit to Tunisia, we saw them also in plains and slopes.
Distribution:
Widespread from the eastern Mediterranean to the north of Iran. In North Africa it is only present in the Jebel Akhdar (NE of Libya), where it used to form large forests (nowadays much thinned and less extensive) and with smaller extensions in the Tunisian Dorsal (Kanguet ez Zelga, Jebel Kessera, Jebel Essatur).
Observations:
According to numerous authors, the common cypress was widespread in antiquity across all regions and islands of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East countries, where it formed extensive forests that were exploited until they almost disappeared. Among the most common uses were construction (it was widely used, for example, in the construction of Solomon’s temple) and timber yards (if in western Europe oak was used and abused for boats, in the eastern Mediterranean, for instance, much of the Turkish fleet was built with already historically diminished cypress forests). The few vestiges that remain of this species in North Africa should be specially protected.
Conservation status:
In the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species it is listed at an European level as Least Concern (LC) (Farjon, 2013). However, due to the very small surviving populations of North Africa, if evaluated here at regional or national level it would be considered threatened. Especially if future genetic studies showed that populations of Tunisia and Libya are different from the rest of the eastern Mediterranean. In Tunisia it is included in its List of native species that are rare and threatened with extinction (Order of the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, 19-July-2006).