Cryptomeria japonica 'Lemonade'

The foliage is what carries this plant. Each shoot is densely packed with short, awl-shaped needles arranged in a soft spiral around the stem — a texture closer to a bottlebrush than to the flat sprays you see on most cedars or arborvitae. New growth emerges in spring as a pale, almost cream-yellow flush, the color giving the cultivar its name. Through summer it settles into a soft chartreuse, never quite turning the deep forest green of the species. In winter the older foliage takes on a faint bronze cast at the tips, particularly where the plant catches cold wind, and recovers its color with the spring push.

Run a hand along a shoot and the needles give slightly — fine and yielding rather than prickly. The plant holds its juvenile foliage throughout, which is part of what keeps the texture so soft; many Cryptomeria transition to a coarser, more scale-like adult leaf as they age, and 'Lemonade' largely doesn't.

Cones appear on mature plants, clustered along the inner branches in tight rosettes about the size of a large marble. Young cones are green and tightly closed, ripening through a season to a warm cinnamon brown with the spiky, recurved bracts that give Cryptomeria cones their distinct silhouette — almost spherical, sculptural, persistent on the branch long after they've shed seed. They're not ornamental in the showy sense, but they're worth looking for. A plant in cone is a plant settled in.

There are no flowers in the conventional sense — Cryptomeria is a conifer, gymnosperm, and reproduces through small male and female cones rather than through petals and pollinators. Male cones are tiny, yellowish, and clustered at branch tips in late winter; they release pollen in early spring and then drop. Most gardeners never notice them.

Habit is upright and gently conical, with branches that hold close to the trunk and feather outward at the tips. Density is naturally good — no shearing required to keep it full — and the plant takes light pruning well if you want to refine the silhouette. Young plants can look a little open and feathery; the form fills in by year three or four.