Cypresses And Junipers (Cupressaceae)

This group gathers Conifers and Other Gymnosperms subcategory members belonging to the cypress family, Cupressaceae, a family whose scale-like or needle-like foliage and small, often woody or berry-like cones distinguish it from the pine family, and whose reach after modern molecular revision now extends to the once-separate redwood family. It spans the true cypresses and the junipers, whose blue, fleshy female cones look and function like berries, the coast redwood and giant sequoia, among the tallest and most massive living trees on Earth, the dawn redwood, once known only as a fossil until a living population was found in China in the 1940s, the bald and swamp cypresses, adapted to grow in standing water, and a long list of trees whose common name borrows the word cedar despite belonging here rather than to the true cedars of the pine family: the western redcedar, incense cedar, Alaska cedar, Japanese cedar and Port Orford cedar among them.