Cupressus funebris Seeds | Mourning Cypress

Mourning Cypress (Cupressus funebris) with fine drooping grey-green sprays on a tall tree — Mourning Cypress (*Cupressus funebris*): Cupressaceae, the pendulous grave-tree of southwestern China.

LATIN NAME: Cupressus funebris

COMMON NAME: Mourning Cypress

Plant Profile

The Mourning Cypress is a tall, graceful conifer of the cypress family from the warm hills of Sichuan, Chongqing and neighbouring provinces, where it has been planted around temples and graves for centuries. Its sprays are fine and distinctly pendulous, hanging from the branches in soft, grey-green curtains that give the whole tree a drooping, sorrowful silhouette, the origin of both its Latin name and its common one. The bark is grey-brown and fibrous, and the small, round cones ripen to a dull brown in their second year.

Old trees in Chinese temple grounds reach twenty metres or more with massively fluted trunks, though garden specimens usually make a narrower ten to fifteen. In the landscape it is a tree of cemeteries, village groves and steep hillsides, planted and self-sown together for so long that its original wild range is hard to unpick.

Science & Biotechnology

Its classification has moved with the times: molecular work on the cypress genus has tested whether this Asian species belongs with the Old World cypresses or merits a genus of its own, and it remains the subject of systematic attention in papers that have redrawn Cupressus as a whole. Its long association with Chinese burial grounds has made it a subject of cultural-landscape studies as well, with centuries of temple-grove planting documented in regional floras and historical records. The essential oil of the foliage and wood carries the terpenoid profile typical of the genus, and its durable, fragrant timber has a long record in Chinese coffin and temple joinery, an end-use that suits a tree named for mourning.

For growers, seed from Chinese temple trees is the standard source, and the species’ garden habits have been documented across two continents since its nineteenth-century introduction to Europe.

Uses & Benefits

Its garden value is the pendulous silhouette: a fine-textured, grey-green conifer that reads as deliberate sorrow or elegant movement depending on the viewer, and which makes a striking vertical accent in a large garden, a memorial planting or a collection of Asian conifers. Birds shelter in the dense sprays and take the small cones, and the tree tolerates the dry, alkaline, exposed conditions that limit many conifers.

The fragrant, rot-resistant timber belongs to the same tradition it was planted beside: Chinese coffin wood and temple joinery, an end-use its drooping form has served since long before botany gave it a name.

Growing from Seed

Give the seed six to eight weeks of cold, moist stratification, then sow in spring into a free-draining compost, covering it thinly and keeping the tray cool, bright and evenly moist. Germination is fair over three to five weeks. Grow the seedlings in full sun and airy conditions, potting on as the root run deepens.

Plant out in autumn into any deep, well-drained soil in full sun, spacing it for the eventual slender spire, and water through the first two summers. It stands drought, alkaline ground and cold wind well, and once established it needs nothing beyond the space its drooping sprays deserve.

Our Take

The grave-tree of Sichuan: fine, drooping sprays, temple-grove history and a durable fragrant timber. A distinctive vertical accent for dry, alkaline gardens.

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