Form Variation in the Italian Cypress

The Italian Cypress (also known as the Mediterranean Cypress) is best known for its tall slender, columnar form. While this is the form that is almost always used for this tree species in gardens, parks, cemeteries and city avenues it is not its only form.

The image above is of an Italian Cypress located in the south of Spain with long, slightly upward lifted branches that give the tree quite a different form than the typical columnar from. The image below is of two Italian Cypress trees grown close together and with a tunnel like arch between them. I found these in the gardens of the Generalife that is part of the Alhambra complex in Granada, Spain.

The tree below is another common form of the Italian Cypress tree. In fact this may be pretty close to this tree species original form. This tree is located in the Montes de Malaga national park in the South of Spain.
This tree species is also used for Bonsais like the one on the image below.

Massive Mountain Bark Beetle Outbreak

image: dead pine trees

The NY Times has published an article today drawing attention to a massive outbreak of Mountain Bark beetles that is killing millions of acres of pine trees in a huge swath all the way from British Columbia to Mexico.

The article states "In the next three to five years, Mr. Kyhl said, virtually all of Colorado’s lodgepole pine trees over five inches in diameter will be lost, about five million acres. “Already in many places, every lodgepole over five inches is dead as far as the eye can see,” he said."

According to the USDA Forrest Service the mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae, severely affects lodgepole pines, sugar pines and ponderosa pines. According to Wikipedia these beetles also affect the limber pines and the Scots pines.

An article in Fast Forward Weekly states ... "Mountain pine beetles are also killing whitebark pines at an unprecedented rate. “They’ve co-evolved with whitebark pine forests for millenia, but this outbreak seems to be more intense than any that we’re aware of in history,” says Murray, adding that climate change appears to be “the leading culprit.”