Pencil Pine

Pencil Pine, Athrotaxis cupressoides, is an evergreen conifer of the cypress family, not a true pine, with small scale-like leaves two to three millimeters long and a conical form. It grows up to twenty meters tall with trunks up to 1.5 meters in diameter, grows very slowly, and can live more than a thousand years. It is endemic to Tasmania, found in the mountains of the Central Plateau, the Great Western Tier, Mount Field National Park, Cradle Mountain, and scattered sites further south at elevations of seven hundred to thirteen hundred meters, typically in subalpine or alpine vegetation and occasionally as a canopy dominant in cool temperate rainforest. It is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, threatened by its extreme sensitivity to fire, disease from the introduced Phytophthora pathogen, and browsing damage to seedlings, with climate change projected to further shrink its range.