American Beauty Atlantic White Cedar Seeds

"American Beauty" Fast growing dry land northern seed strain of Chamaecyparis indigenous to North America

One of the rarest of evergreens and difficult to obtain seeds, I was fortunate to make a small planting of several trees grown from seed from a midwestern arboretum that had mature plants.  I propagated them in trays in my polyhouses at first and then eventually grew them in the 'outback' to establish a local seed source. Surprisingly the seedlings grew vigorously in my non wetland soil. Over a twenty five year period the trees have set a good crops of cones. They are very slow to pick and then winnow out the seeds even with the fancy seed screens and processors I have. This one is very labor intensive but worth while to grow as it is rare in its native range and needs to be used outside of its New Jersey and eastern range.

Normally a wetland tree this species of Chamaecyparis grows along the east coast and is know for its fine water and insect repellent wood. This species was used for outside decking, boat building and other uses similar to bald cypress. I have found it adaptable and easy to grow even in sandy dry soil. One of my customers was telling me his trees grew to 10 ft. in 3 years. His planting was done in a wet sandy area with a high water table.

Height to 80 ft. with a large 3-4 ft. trunk.  Easily hardy in zone 5 .No winter damage has been observed on the trees in southwestern Michigan. At minus 27F in the winter of 2018-19 and there was no winter burn. At this point white tail deer consume the foliage but limited. Browsing is extremely light most years. 

"American Beauty" is a seed strain that represents the most northern portion of its range as well as selected for speed of growth. The seedlings with the most growth after two years were planted out initially over 25 years ago. Further selection should be done to find even more faster growing seed strains with a larger population in real life plantings. 

To germinate the seeds: plant outside in fall lightly raking the seeds in the soil They are tiny so careful not to plant too deep. The seeds will germinate in the spring. A portion of the seeds will germinate the second spring as it is common with this species to be doubly dormant.

For the germination in your refrigerator, put the seeds in a lightly moist bag of sand, and peat and store near 33 F for 120 days and then plant outside or in a flat. As they sprout you can pluck them out and put them in pots.  Seeds will stay fairly dormant in the refrigerator. One of my customers freezes his in a block of moist peat moss for 120 days and then plants. I am not sure how that is better but it appeared to work well for him.  The seeds do not damp off easily so you usually get a high tree percentage. One of my customers created an outdoor seed bed totally enclosed by hardware cloth top to bottom to prevent mice from eating the seed. He was trying to fill his wetland with this species.