Weeping cedar

A short circuit one morning earlier this week provided an opportunity to visit the weeping Atlas cedar of Hook Road, which, I am pleased to be able to report, is still in fine fettle.

Some of the weeping.

Zoom suggests that what looks like rather haphazard placement of needles on the growing tips, settles down to clumps of needles on mature shoots, no doubt arranged in some phyllotactically proper fashion.

However, the interest this morning is not the needles on the stem, rather the fact of weeping. What mechanisms are at work here to make for this unusual habit?

This particular weeper, Cedrus atlantica (Glauca Group) 'Glauca Pendula', has plenty of presence on the Internet, but it barely makes reference 3 and does not make reference 4 at all.

Work in progress.

Product of the circuit. Labour Party looking a bit undisciplined in the Guardian, something it is all too good at. Page 3 devoted to a clothed Bridget Jones. The Guardian version of a page 3 girl. The Guardian also came with a handy catalogue from Dunelm, which latter had to be removed before the former could be folded into the shopping bag. A catalogue which served as antidote to all the wokery n the paper itself.

Nuts to make a change from peanuts, missing from the shelves of our Sainsbury's for some reason. And a pork pie to make a change, an occasional indulgence in junk food. I was surprised at how little space was given to pork pies and gala pie in Waitrose: I can only suppose that this one-time all-British staple has been largely displaced by foreign influences. The very same foreigners so many of us are so vociferous about putting the squeeze on?

Elis of Ely of reference 6, makers of the authentic British product, have relocated to St. John's Street in Bury St. Edmunds, which looks busy enough in Street View. Remarks at reference 6 notwithstanding, what I now remember is that I found their pies a little too peppery for my taste.

PS 1: I got my Christmas pack from the people at reference 5 this morning. Which, at the very least, has served to remind me how unpleasant the current regime in Iran is. Inter alia, one of the few places to fuse religious and state authority, not something we have done in this country for some centuries now. Not forgetting that the closing years of the previous regime were not good either, with our own role not being too good either.

PS 2: Bing's offering on weeping. All down to mutations in the genes which are responsible for the hormones which control the growth of shoots, including their response to sunlight and gravity. The reference at the bottom of the snap is reference 7 below - and there are plenty more, respectable looking references at the end.

Not the sort of trait that would prosper naturally, but it is liked by gardeners and so is widely propagated by unnatural means.

Google's offering on the same clue is rather more detailed, essentially amplifying that of Bing. The top of it is snapped above. For serious readers he includes reference 10, bottom right in the snap above.

[Nestled in the heart of the arboretum “la Vallée-aux-Loups”, near the remains of Chateaubriand, the ancestor of all the weeping cedar stands enthroned majestically. 150 years ago, a nurseryman planted blue Atlas cedar. But a mutation appeared giving a weeping character that tree. Other specimens present in the world all come from cuttings or transplants performed from this single specimen. Spectacular when viewed from afar in the park, this blue Atlas cedar is even more surprising and impressive when we slide under its foliage which offers 700m2 of protection to its visitors]

He also turns up the original weeping cedar, from France, snapped above from reference 8 - which rather puts Hook Road in the shade.

I associate to the funny mutations which dog people go in for, building whole breeds around them. Pedigrees, shows, cups, the works.

PS 3: the arboretum mentioned above does not appear to have its own website although it does appear on plenty of local government websites. It also gets its own Wikipedia page at reference 9. The red pin marks the spot in the snap above, a little to the south of Paris. Probably both nearer to and more accessible from Paris than Wisley is from London. But at least it is a garden in the English style - and the Wikipedia page looks to feature the tree in question.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/08/trolleys-930-and-931.html. Looks to be the most recent notice of the weeping cedar.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllotaxis.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedrus_atlantica. 

Reference 4: https://www.thespruce.com/what-are-weeping-trees-3269676.

Reference 5: https://iliberty.org.uk/.

Reference 6: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/01/in-praise-of-edis-of-ely.html.

Reference 7: https://synopsis.mcmaster.ca/why-trees-weep-copy/.

Reference 8: https://www.treeoftheyear.org/previous-years/2016/Modry-previsly-cedr.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arboretum_de_la_Vall%C3%A9e-aux-Loups.

Reference 10: Defying gravity: WEEP promotes negative gravitropism in peach trees by establishing asymmetric auxin gradients - Andrea R. Kohler, Andrew Scheil, Joseph L. Hill, Jeffrey R. Allen, Jameel M. Al-Haddad, Charity Z. Goeckeritz, Lucia C. Strader, Frank W. Telewski, Courtney A. Hollender - 2024. Open access.