Cypress Dupre
Cypress Dupre (lat. Cupressus dupreziana) — or Saharan cypress is such a rare tree on the planet that people have easily counted the number of growing specimens and are now making plans on how to propagate the plant so that it does not disappear from the face of the Earth.
The tree itself reproduces reluctantly, since it has a rather rare method of reproduction. And the lifeless sands of the Sahara Desert are slowly but surely conquering territory from living trees.
What”s in your name
The first word of the plant”s name means that it belongs to the genus Cypress (Latin: Cupressus), which is part of the Cypress family (Latin: Cupressaceae).
The second species name “Saharan” refers to the place where the tree grows, having chosen the hot sands of the African Sahara Desert.
The Latin species name “dupreziana” (“Dupre”) immortalizes the name of the French captain Maurice Duprez. This was done at the request of the French zoologist Louis Lavauden, who became a forester in Tunisia after the end of the First World War. It was he who was first notified by Maurice Dupre of his discovery of a special type of cypress on the high Tamrit plateau in the Sahara Desert.
This is how the plant received its Latin name, although the first news of the presence of coniferous Cypresses in the desert appeared in Europe in the second half of the 19th century from the Englishman Henry Baker Tristram, who traveled through the Great Sahara and wrote a book about it.
Description
Very ancient trees, whose age is estimated by scientists at more than 2000 years, have retained their unique population in the central part of the Sahara Desert. They avoid other trees, staying hundreds of kilometers away from them. Botanists counted only 233 specimens growing in the wild.
The highest of them reach 22 meters. The sparse young growth looks more like a shrub, but gradually turns into a tree with one central trunk. The red-brown bark protecting the trunk is covered with longitudinal cracks. The branches form an angle of about 90 degrees with the trunk, and then stretch their ends to the sky.
Sahara cypress differs from the more common evergreen cypress in the bluer color of its scale-like leaves, densely located on the shoots. Each leaf has a white drop of resin. Small shoots are often flattened in one plane.
The size of the cones of Saharan Cypress is almost 2 times smaller than that of Evergreen Cypress. Their length ranges from 1. 5 to 2. 5 cm. The spherical pink female cones change their color to gray-brown as they mature. The winged seeds are flattened, oval-shaped, red-brown.
The isolation and small number of plants created a unique method of reproduction, called “apomixis” by scientists. Although trees have both female and male cones, seeds develop solely from the genetic content of male pollen. Female cones do not participate in the genetic structure, and therefore do not perform a maternal function, but play the role of a nurse, providing the offspring only with nutrition.
The future of Saharan cypress
Fortunately, there are those among people who are concerned about the continuation of the life of the unique plants of the Earth. In Australia, six kilometers from the capital Canberra, an Arboretum is being created, in which it is planned to create 100 forest areas of rare and endangered tree species.
Among them will be a cypress forest, for which 1, 300 seedlings of the unique Saharan Cypress or Cypress Dupre were specially grown.
As an ornamental tree, Cypress Dupre can now be found in warm and dry places in southern Europe. After all, life in the Sahara has taught the tree to withstand drought.
