Cupressus torulosaD.Don ex Lamb.

Himalayan CypressHimalayan cypress

WFO wfo-0000630822 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Cupressus torulosa, photographed by Ramnarayan K
fig. a Ramnarayan K, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-02-03 / obs. 112127042
Cupressus torulosa, photographed by Ramnarayan K
fig. b Ramnarayan K, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112127174
Cupressus torulosa, photographed by Ramnarayan K
fig. c Ramnarayan K, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112127074
Cupressus torulosa, photographed by P Jeganathan
fig. d P Jeganathan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 46930356
Cupressus torulosa, photographed by Ramnarayan K
fig. e Ramnarayan K, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174902498
Cupressus torulosa, photographed by Ramnarayan K
fig. f Ramnarayan K, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112127190
Cupressus torulosa, photographed by Ramnarayan K
fig. g Ramnarayan K, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112127207
Cupressus torulosa, photographed by Ramnarayan K
fig. h Ramnarayan K, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174902471

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 5 botanical countries

Regions where Cupressus torulosa is native: Tibet, East Himalaya, Nepal, Pakistan, West Himalaya TibetEast HimalayaNepalPakistanWest Himalaya
Native distribution of Cupressus torulosa, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
East Himalaya EHM ASIA-TROPICAL
Nepal NEP
Pakistan PAK
West Himalaya WHM
Tibet CHT ASIA-TEMPERATE

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 36 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -11.0 °C -2.9 °C 5.6 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 15.0 °C 22.3 °C 28.1 °C
Annual rainfall 754 mm 1,601 mm 3,028 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 38 mm 72 mm 142 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 36 research-grade observations of Cupressus torulosa that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 33 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Athrotaxis joucadan Carrière
  • Cupressus austrotibetica Silba
  • Cupressus austrotibetica subsp. austrotibetica
  • Cupressus austrotibetica subsp. medogensis Silba
  • Cupressus austrotibetica subsp. tongmaiensis (Silba) Silba
  • Cupressus balfouriana Lemoine ex Gordon
  • Cupressus corneyana Carrière & hort. ex Carrière
  • Cupressus doniana hort. ex Hook.f.
  • Cupressus duclouxiana subsp. austrotibetica (Silba) Silba
  • Cupressus gigantea subsp. ludlowii (Silba) Silba
  • Cupressus gigantea subsp. tongmaiensis (Silba) Silba
  • Cupressus himalaica Silba
  • Cupressus karnaliensis Silba
  • Cupressus karnaliensis subsp. mustangensis (Silba) Silba
  • Cupressus karnaliensis var. mustangensis Silba
  • Cupressus lusitanica subsp. kuluensis Silba
  • Cupressus lusitanica subsp. torulosa (D.Don ex Lamb.) Silba & Brian Chen
  • Cupressus majestica Knight
  • Cupressus nepalensis Loudon
  • Cupressus pakistanensis Silba
  • Cupressus sempervirens subsp. indica (Parl.) Silba
  • Cupressus sempervirens var. indica Parl.
  • Cupressus tongmaiensis Silba
  • Cupressus tongmaiensis var. ludlowii Silba

and 9 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.