Common Name: CYPRESS FAMILY
Habit: Shrub, tree, generally evergreen; monoecious or dioecious. Leaf: simple, cauline, alternate or opposite (either +- 4-ranked) or whorled in 3s (6-ranked), linear or scale-, awl- or needle-like (sometimes linear and awl-like on 1 pl, or on juvenile or injured plants), generally decurrent, covering young stems. Pollen Cone: axillary or terminal. Seed Cone: +- fleshy to generally woody, generally hard at maturity; scales opposite or whorled, peltate or not. Seed: 1--many per scale, angled or lateral winged, generally wind-dispersed. Chromosomes: n=11.
Genera In Family: 30 genera, 130+ species: +- worldwide, especially North America, Eurasia. Note: Incl (paraphyletic) Taxodiaceae. Taxa of (polyphyletic) Cupressus in TJM (1993) now in Callitropsis, Chamaecyparis, Hesperocyparis.
eFlora Treatment Author: Jim A. Bartel, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Thomas J. Rosatti.

Common Name: REDWOOD

Etymology: (John Lockhart has indicated (7 Jul 2004 Interchange Feedback) that, according to Asa Gray, no one has ever found, in the writings of Endlicher (author of the genus name Sequoia), any mention of Sequoyah, the Cherokee chief for whom the genus Sequoia is often said to have been named (in Cherokee, "sequoyah" means "opossum"), and that Gray instead believed that the stem of the word was a derivation from the Latin "sequi" or "sequor," meaning "sequence" or "following," in reference to the fact that redwoods were remnants or followers of numerous fossil ancestors.)
eFlora Treatment Author: Steve Boyd & James R. Griffin