Oriental White Cedar, Oriental Arbovitae, Chinese Arbor-vitae

This beautiful plant is used extensively in esp. large campuses here for the purpose of hedging. It takes pruning nicely and so hedges a...Read Morere trimmed to desired shapes. Also, it is used on lawns shaped like spheres or other interesting shapes. I've seen it being grown in our workplace campus. The tough texture and curious shape of the fan-like leaf growth makes it interesting to feel with the hand and look at! The green is perennial and consistent all round the year.

Used as anti-asthmatic,anti-bacterial,anti-pyretic and haemostatic.

A Conifer from China, where it´s known as "Tree of Life". It reaches up to 30 meters high, but in our hot climate, it never grows too mu...Read Morech, being used, usually, as short hedges and living fences. There are two wonderful specimens growing on the garden in front of the museum where I work. They must be over than 100 years old, but they have reached only 3m tall.

These trees have characteristic branching, making the branches and branchlets look flat, and organized almost vertically. They give the tree a pyramidal shape. Also, the light grey bark looks spyraled in older trees, and may grow contorted too. The leaves are blue-green, scale like, aromatic. The male cones are brown and short, formed on the tip of the branches. The female cones are small, pendulous, light green and spherical, turning brown/red when ripe.

This tree requires moderately cold climates. It´s hardly seen here in Rio de Janeiro, where it´s very hot all the time.