Today's Flowers #68: Cypress Park

Last weekend, Grace' company had its annual company trip. This year, one of the highlight of the trip is to visit the park of giant cypress trees. This lovely purple flower was just about to bloom on the forest floor.

Here the flower is in its full bloom. The cypress trees are species native to Taiwan. They consist of two distinct species: Taiwan Cypress, 扁柏 (Chamaecyparis taiwanensis), and Formosan Cypress, 紅檜 (Chamaecyparis formosensis). They are very slow-growing trees and live for a long time. Formosan Cypress takes 350 years to mature and the Taiwan Cypress takes three times longer. These woods are very precious and have been logged since the late 19th century, first by Japanese then by Taiwan government. The presidential palace of South Korea and many temples in Japan were built using these timbers. It was not until ten years ago that Taiwan government issued a fifty-year ban on all logging in Taiwan.

There were three major logging operations in Taiwan, the area that we visited was the last one been developed. The park is actually an original old-growth forest that has never been logged. The 37 acres park contains over 100 cypress trees with age ranging from 1000 to over 2000 years old.

As human, when the tree gets old, strange formation appears on its skin. Can you see a skeleton with a spar on this tree?

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