Growing A Cypress Indoors

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Under the sign of Capricorn

According to the horoscope, the sign of the Zodiac Capricorn (December 22-January 20) corresponds to the deremskaya and fragrant dracaena, ficuses, elephant yucca, fan palms, silver and sickle-shaped fat women ("money tree", "monkey tree"), noble laurel, "living stones", coniferous crops.

In the assortment of coniferous indoor plants among amateur flower growers, cypress takes a more modest place and is much less common than such conifers as araucaria, thuja and cypress, widely known in home floriculture.

The cypress has several more names - cypress and false cypress. According to some experts, its genus (Chamaeparis) unites 7 species and belongs to the Cypress family (Cupressaceae).

Under natural conditions, the cypress lives in North America on the coast of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the subtropical regions of East Asia. In the wild, it occurs in the form of trees and tall shrubs with a conical crown, reaching heights of 50 m or more.

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Some lovers keep the cypress at home in the form of a bonsai style: then its plants do not reach impressive sizes. But if he is provided with rather favorable conditions and care in indoor conditions, he is able to relatively quickly turn into a rather large plant.

Therefore, it is preferable to keep the cypress in a spacious room or in a winter garden. This is an evergreen tree with a cone-shaped crown, with branches, flattened (horizontally located), drooping, arranged in two rows.

Although the cypress belongs to a rather shade-tolerant plant, for optimal maintenance it needs to find a sufficiently bright place, but where direct sunlight is excluded from its foliage.

When placed in the garden, keep in mind that it does not tolerate excessive sun exposure. For the summer, it is preferable to take a houseplant out into fresh air (in a garden, on a loggia or balcony), but it must be protected from drafts. If it is planted in open ground, then excessive waterlogging or flooding is not allowed. During this period, he needs enough heat (temperature at least 20 ° C).

In addition, this coniferous plant is quite sensitive to the lack of moisture in the air and soil, therefore it is often and regularly watered with a small amount of soft water, preventing it from stagnating in the pan. To keep the substrate in a constantly moist state (especially in the hot season), it can be placed on pebbles spread out on a wide pan with water.

To reduce evaporation of moisture from the topsoil, it is also recommended to mulch it; it is advisable to spray the crown of the plant with water several times a day, since it needs high humidity. In the fall, watering is reduced, preventing the earthen coma from drying out.

Since this plant takes out nutrients relatively slowly, top dressing (in the form of weak solutions of liquid organic fertilizers), even during the period of active growth, is done moderately (once every two weeks), having previously loosened the soil surface (preferably after preliminary spilling with a small amount of water).

In the spring, dry branches must be removed. If pruning is carried out, then new extra shoots are removed so that the crown does not grow, and the branches turn out to be proportional in size to each other. But after the appearance of the leaves, the shoots are not recommended to be partially cut, they should be removed completely, evenly cleaning all the dried leaves from the crown.

The cypress grows relatively slowly. If the grower allows the plant to grow naturally and does not restrain its development, then the transplant is carried out as needed. When growing it in the bonsai style, a transplant is done every 3-5 years - only in early spring.

For growing cypress, a fairly spacious container is selected, since it forms a large root system. The soil substrate is prepared from fertile loose (porous) clay-soddy calcareous soil. A drainage layer of broken brick or pebbles must be placed on the bottom of the pot. For the winter period, it is better to identify it in a room with a temperature of 10 ° C.

Cypress is propagated by seeds (in spring) and semi-lignified cuttings (from autumn), the survival of which is accelerated when using the treatment of sections with hormonal preparations and with lower heating of the soil.

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A remarkable feature of the cypress is the ability of some of its branches to mutate, which allows you to get new specimens of trees from cuttings, a huge variety of forms and varieties that differ in appearance, leaves, the color of which varies from bright green to pale grayish.

Its forms can grow not only in closed ground, but also in the garden, where they need to be covered for the winter, therefore, when a certain height is reached, the plant, if desired, can be moved to open ground, since its interesting characteristic feature, according to a number of experts, is stability to the cold.

Experts call the cypress species the most acceptable for indoor cultivation - pea (Chamaecyparis pisifera) and, less often, Lawson (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana).

Under natural conditions, pea cypress grows on moist acidic soils of the subtropics of Japan, reaching a height of 25-27 m. It has a cone-shaped crown and horizontally spread branches, densely leafy shoots, bluish-blue needles, fluffy. The pea cypress has several low-growing forms that can be successfully used at home.

So, the form of Filifera nana cultivated in the bonsai style is a dwarf-sized shrub with dark green scaly needles, reaching at the age of 25 about 40 cm in height and 90 cm in width.

Filifera Sangold is a short, very slowly growing form (up to a maximum of 1 m in height over the same period) with a wide-conical crown (up to 2 m in diameter). It has a reddish-brown bark and scaly, golden-yellow needles.

Lawson's cypress (C. lawsoniana) - origin from the southern states of the Pacific coast of North America (California). In nature, its specimens reach a height of 50 m. This evergreen, often wide-pyramidal plant has branches with small, scaly, compressed needles (green above, silvery or bluish-green below) in the form of a fan. It has a fairly elastic wood, so different styles can be formed from the original wood.

There are many decorative forms, differing in the structure and size of the crown, color and length of the needles. Some of them are even capable of wintering in central Russia. On the lateral branches, all branches of the following orders are located in one plane, which at first has a vertical position, then deviates into a horizontal one.

In room culture, it is considered relatively unpretentious, but growing rather rapidly, therefore, rather rare dressings are carried out - once every 1-1.5 months (spring-autumn). Its form Fletchery nana (1-1.2 m high) - in culture since 1939 - is characterized by a wide-conical crown and thin and delicate needles. According to experts, Lawson's cypress propagates well by seeds (main species) or cuttings from young shoots (varieties).

Along with the eastern thuja, the most common in indoor floriculture, cypress is a good decorative material for indoor gardening. In summer, its tubular specimens can be of great interest for landscaping terraces, balconies and lobbies. For these purposes, especially spectacular forms with a pyramidal, columnar, spherical and weeping crown are selected.

The appearance of fungal diseases on the cypress is possible when the corresponding phytosanitary standards are not observed during trimming and the infection is introduced.

Red mites, which can settle in a room with low air humidity, are removed with a cotton swab moistened with alcohol, and are also destroyed by spraying with a solution of acaricide (actellic or neoron), but the concentration of these drugs is reduced by 2-3 times against those recommended on ordinary plants. In addition, it does not hurt to first check the possibility of burns on the needles from the prepared concentration on a separate branch.