Cedrus deodara
| Deodar Cedar | |||||||||||||||
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| A young tree in cultivation | |||||||||||||||
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| Binomial name | |||||||||||||||
| Cedrus deodara (Roxb.) G.Don |
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Cedrus deodara (Deodar Cedar, Himalayan Cedar, or Deodar; Hindi, Sanskrit: देवदार devadāru; Chinese: 雪松 xue song) is a species of cedar trees that live in the western Himalayas and in eastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, north-central India (Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand states), Kashmir, southwesternmost Tibet and western Nepal, and live in places at 1500-3200 m above sea level. It is a large evergreen coniferous tree reaching 40-50 m tall, exceptionally 60 m, with a trunk up to 3m thick. It has a cone-shaped crown with level branches and drooping branchlets.
The leaves are needle-like, mostly 2.5-5 cm long, occasionally up to 7 cm long, very thin (1 mm thick), borne singly on long shoots, and in dense clusters of 20-30 on short shoots; their colours range from bright green to glaucous blue-green in colour. The female cones are barrel-shaped, 7-13 cm long and 5-9 cm broad, and break when up mature (in 12 months) to release the winged seeds. The male cones are 4-6 cm long, and shed their pollen in autumn.
