Help me identify this conifer please

orangecrush

Hello gardeners,

Could you please help me figure out what this conifer is?

It’s about 10 years old, 6 foot tall and 4 foot diameter. Previous owners of the house kept it trimmed so it could have been bigger/ could be older.

It’s planted at the front of our house and I’m trying to decide if it could be responsible for some slight subsidence in that area.

The NHBC building near trees guide suggests cypress are high water demand, so I’m debating removing it if it is cypress, but I’m not sure. 

Down side is it’s home to a family of sparrows that nest in it every spring. I don’t want to trash their house. 

Eldi_Dos

Could always try moving to to another bit of the garden further away from house if you have the space. This is ideal time of year to start if that is something you would want to do.

orangecrush

It would be really difficult to move, as we have nowhere else to put it without evicting something else, which I don’t have time to do really. The front garden is scheduled for revamp in 2024, so I don’t want to do much else until then as the rest of the house renovations are so far behind. 

I think my gut is telling me it has to go, I just want to be quasi-scientific about it by trying to identify it beforehand 🤪 

sevenhills

Six foot tall is not very big, unlikely to be causing damage. Conifers generally have shallow roots. Have you ruled out old mine works?

orangecrush

sevenhills said:

Six foot tall is not very big, unlikely to be causing damage. Conifers generally have shallow roots. Have you ruled out old mine works?

Yes, I have a whole other thread on the subsidence (can’t seem to link to it, sorry) and mine works very unlikely. 

Édit to add: the NHBC guidance says conifers are all moderate or high water demand, hence my concern. Even if they have shallow roots, they may have a lot of them sucking the water from our heavy clay soil 😖

Keep_pedalling

Looks like Lawson’s Cypress.

orangecrush

Keep_pedalling said:

Looks like Lawson’s Cypress.

That was my first impression but this one has never had any berries 🤔 

If it is Lawson cypress it definitely needs to come out, it’s literally 3 feet from the house 🫣

fatbelly

Looks like it to me

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/a-z-of-british-trees/lawson-cypress/

Grows to 45 metres in the wild

orangecrush

fatbelly said:

Looks like it to me

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/a-z-of-british-trees/lawson-cypress/

Grows to 45 metres in the wild

Oh flip, that’s even bigger than I thought!!

Ok, tree is going. I’ll buy a nest box for the sparrows! 

Thank you everyone 

MalMonroe

Hi, I'm rubbish at gardening things but I love trees. And was prompted by your post to look at this website -

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/a-z-of-british-trees/leyland-cypress/

Where it says you can download an app to identify trees! Who knew? There are just so many apps for so many things these days it's mind boggling. 

I was worrying about the sparrows until you said you will buy them a nest box, so that's okay. We have a really weird bush in our front garden that I'd dearly like to get rid of but robins seem to love it so we just trim it every so often. It IS getting bigger though! But we daren't go too mad with the trimming in case the robins really don't want us to.     

Eldi_Dos

If you are going to dig it out try and keep as much of the root ball together and pot it into a large container with some good compost. If you manage to over winter it and it stays healthy you would have quite a valuable specimen if you wanted to sell on.
A 6' specimen potted would be quite desirable to some people.