Atlas cedar
Needles attached singly and in clusters, the former only on young shoots. Buds in the axils of these needles go on to produce characteristic spur shoots with clusters of 30-45 needles at their tips. Needles between 1.5-2.5cm long, square in cross-section with abruptly tapered translucent tips. Trees encountered in British Isles needles are most often strongly glaucous. Evergreen. Barrel-shaped cones are upright and disintegrate in situ when mature. Male cones around 5cm long when mature and shed pollen in September before turning brown and falling to the ground. Lead shoot at top of younger trees leans to one side but does not arch over. Initially an archetypal conical conifer shape, crown of the tree flattens out into the classic and recognisable cedar form as it matures. Of the four recognised species of Cedrus only three are likely to be encountered in the British Isles and can be very similar in appearance. Characters such as the needle length, needle tip and colour, and timing of the male cones maturing help to separate them. The attitude of the tips of young branches can be helpful; in Atlas cedar they usually ascend though this is not fully reliable.
Atlas cedar was introduced to the British Isles shortly before 1840 and is native to the mountains of Morocco and Algeria. It is a common forestry species in southern Europe but in the British Isles is much more a tree of parks and the gardens of stately homes. The three Mediterranean Cedrus are very closely related and were probably once part of an extended clinal population that stretched across the Mediterranean basin. Though currently classed as separate species the characters used to split them occur in populations of both in the wild and they may be best treated as subspecies. Foliage colour is a good example of this with both green and strongly glaucous forms found in wild populations of both C. atlantica and C. libani. However, in the British Isles it is almost exclusively the glaucous blue form which is planted.