An A-Z of 2024 in the garden: Xanthocyparis Vietnamensis

This letter of the alphabet was causing me a problem with my A-Z of the Dumfriesshire Garden in 2024. Then I realised the solution was right in front of me.

One day this summer, my neighbour rang to say that the owner of a large specialist plant nursery in Galloway had called to say hello and in his van was large number of interesting plants. This is a call which does come from time to time, and to which I happily respond. The horticultural equivalent of the ‘fish van’, albeit intermittent, is a wonderful opportunity to buy interesting material at the garden gate, and not to be missed. On this particular day I bought a variety of shrubs as well as an unusual hornbeam (Carpinus Fangiana) and a rather special horse chestnut, Ohio Buckeye (Aesculus Glabra).

Content with my haul, and somewhat poorer, I turned with my wheelbarrow, only to receive one more compelling pitch from the plantsman. The shining green specimen in question was the Vietnamese Golden Cypress – or Xanthocyparis Vietnamensis. Despite the ‘golden’ of the common name, it seemed to have a touch of silver sparkle about it. The plant was obviously healthy and had been grown locally. But I was told it had only been discovered in the wild in 2001 and is considered an endangered species. At £18 I added it to my purchases and vowed to take care of it.

Over the summer I kept it on the terrace among other groups of potted plants. When early frosts arrived in September I decided to bring it into the house, where it sits happily among more standard indoor plants. Thus cared for, it has almost doubled in size. I think I’ll continue with this interior-exterior mode of cultivation and if the plant gets stronger it will eventually go out into the garden proper. I’m hoping for great things from this recent and rare arrival – bought off the back of a van.

Sadly, it will no longer help with ‘X’ in any future A-Z that I may write. Following various taxonomic disputations, its name has now been changed to cupressus-vietnamensis

The full list of pieces that make up my A-Z in the Dumfriesshire Garden in 2024 can be found here: https://davidgrahamclark.net/a-z-of-the-dumfriesshire-garden-in-2024/