Hesperocyparis lusitanica (cedar-of-Goa)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Hesperocyparis lusitanica, photographed by Tereso Hernández Morales — fig. a Tereso Hernández Morales, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-22 / obs. 191787680

Hesperocyparis lusitanica, photographed by Tony Rebelo — fig. b Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 176153850

Hesperocyparis lusitanica, photographed by Jake Rehage — fig. g Jake Rehage, CC0 1.0 / obs. 95481107

Hesperocyparis lusitanica, photographed by Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez — fig. h Oscar Alejandro Morales Juárez, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 98010984

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium: Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession: US 1593322
Filed as: Hesperocyparis lusitanica (Mill.) Bartel
Det. by: (US) Smithsonian Institution - National Museum of Natural History - Department of Botany (UNITED STATES)
Collected: H. García B. 1935-01-03
Origin: CO
The sheet: View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 11 botanical countries

Native distribution of Hesperocyparis lusitanica, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Mexico Central	MXC	NORTHERN AMERICA
Mexico Gulf	MXG
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Mexico Southeast	MXT
Mexico Southwest	MXS
Belize	BLZ	SOUTHERN AMERICA
El Salvador	ELS
Guatemala	GUA
Honduras	HON
Nicaragua	NIC

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 786 observations

Condition	5th percentile	Median	95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low	0.3 °C	5.1 °C	12.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high	18.8 °C	23.4 °C	29.4 °C
Annual rainfall	640 mm	1,007 mm	2,627 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter	22 mm	41 mm	240 mm

It is found where winters are cool but frost is light or absent. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 786 research-grade observations of Hesperocyparis lusitanica 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 39 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.

Callitropsis lusitanica (Mill.) D.P.Little
Cupressus benthamii var. lindleii (Klotzsch ex Endl.) Mast.
Cupressus coulteri J.Forbes
Cupressus excelsa J.Scott ex Carrière
Cupressus glauca Lam.
Cupressus glauca var. tristis Endl.
Cupressus karwinskiana Regel
Cupressus lindleyi Klotzsch ex Endl.
Cupressus lindleyi subsp. hondurensis (Silba) Silba
Cupressus lindleyi var. hondurensis (Silba) Silba
Cupressus lusitanica Mill.
Cupressus lusitanica f. vulgaris Franco
Cupressus lusitanica subsp. genuina Franco
Cupressus lusitanica subsp. mexicana (K.Koch) Maire
Cupressus lusitanica var. chlorocarpa Franco
Cupressus lusitanica var. communis Franco
Cupressus lusitanica var. epruinosa Franco
Cupressus lusitanica var. glauca A.Henry
Cupressus lusitanica var. hondurensis Silba
Cupressus lusitanica var. knightiana (Perry ex Gordon) Rehder
Cupressus lusitanica var. lindleyi (Klotzsch ex Endl.) Carrière
Cupressus lusitanica var. lusitanica
Cupressus lusitanica var. skinneri (J.Scott ex Carrière) A.Henry
Cupressus lusitanica var. tristis (Endl.) Carrière

and 15 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol HELU. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.