Thujopsis dolabrata 'Nana'

A dwarf form of one of Japan's legendary Five Sacred Trees of Kiso (五木の禁伐, goboku no kinbatsu) — a select group of conifers protected by feudal law for centuries, reserved for imperial residences and temple construction, where commoners caught poaching the wood faced execution. The species, Thujopsis dolabrata, is endemic to Japan and known there as asunaro (アスナロ), a name that translates beautifully and a little wistfully as "tomorrow it will become hinoki" — a reference to its resemblance to the more revered hinoki cypress, with the implication that it's perpetually almost-but-not-quite the more famous tree. It is the sole species in its entire genus.

'Nana' is the dwarf form, a Japanese garden selection that originated long enough ago that no one is sure exactly when — though Veitch & Sons Nursery in England introduced it to the Western trade in the early 1860s, which puts it solidly in the same wave of Japanese garden cultivars that arrived during the Meiji-era opening of Japanese horticulture to the West. It grows as a flat-topped, bun-shaped mound, slowly. Real growth measures in inches per year, not feet — a foot tall and three feet wide after a decade is typical, and a mature specimen at 4–6 feet across after twenty-plus years is the upper end.

The visual signature is the foliage. Each leaf is a thick, hatchet-shaped scale (the genus epithet dolabrata comes from Latin dolabra, hatchet) arranged in flat overlapping sprays that look from above like miniature glossy ferns or, depending on your eye, antler velvet — hence the cluster of English common names that include elkhorn cedar, staghorn cedar, and dwarf hiba cedar. Turn a spray over and you find the real surprise: the underside of every leaf is marked with a vivid silvery-white stomatal band, painted on like a brushstroke. In sunlight the contrast between glossy emerald above and silver below is the kind of detail that makes someone bend down to look closer. In winter, the foliage often picks up bronze or russet tones, particularly in colder zones, before settling back to deep green in spring.

Best in part shade in the Southeast — full sun is fine in cooler climates, but in zones 7–8 some afternoon shelter prevents the foliage from looking thin in late summer. Excellent in Japanese gardens, beside stone basins or lanterns, in the foreground of woodland borders, or in large containers where its measured pace and slow architecture earn it more attention than a faster-growing plant could.

A plant for the gardener who has stopped buying for instant impact and started buying for what they want to be looking at in twenty years.

Additional photo courtesy of Oregon State Univeristy.