An evergreen tree averaging in its adult state 150 to 180 ft, but occasionally over 200 ft in height, the trunk (sometimes 30 ft in girth) clothed with reddish brown bark separating from it in loose strips. As in so many conifers, the leaves of juvenile trees are quite distinct from those of adult ones. The former are arranged equally all round the stem, about twenty to the inch, awl-shaped, 1⁄4 to 5⁄8 in. long, 1⁄12 in. wide at the base, spine-tipped and of hard texture. Leaves and twigs of adult trees very like those of Athrotaxis laxifolia, the former being 1⁄8 to 1⁄6 in. long, triangular in cross section, incurved at the shortly pointed apex, with stomata on all three surfaces; they are close enough together completely to hide the stems. Cones terminal, ovoid-cylindrical, 1⁄2 in. long, 1⁄4 to 3⁄8 in. wide; scales numerous, rounded, overlapping.
Native of Formosa, especially on Mt Morrison; first introduced to England in 1920 by E. H. Wilson, who had raised plants in the Arnold Arboretum from seed he had himself collected in Formosa. This tree is one of the tallest conifers in the Old World and is only surpassed in height by some of those native in the Himalaya. The shoots of young trees are very like those of Cryptomeria japonica and the adult tree is in general aspect also similar. In youth it is extremely elegant, the branches curved gracefully upwards, the branchlets slender and more or less drooping.
T. cryptomerioides is rare outside collections. The tallest example grows at Killerton in Devon, 41 × 13⁄4 ft (1973). At Wakehurst Place in Sussex it is 24 × 1 ft (1970).
The mainland race, or relative, of the Formosan species was first collected in Burma by J. H. Lace in 1912, near the Pyehpat bungalow, on the track between Myitkyina and Hpimaw, on the Burma-Yunnan frontier. Frank Kingdon Ward met with it in March 1939 near Htawgaw (just below 26° N). Here, and for some way north it used to be common, but most accessible trees had been felled and the planks exported to China to make coffins (Kingdon Ward, Burma’s Icy Mountains (1949), pp. 222, 241, 267-71, plate facing p. 272; Pilgrimage for Plants (1960), Chap. 12; and Blackwood’s Magazine, No. 1490 (1939), pp. 769-84). In China the mainland taiwania was found by Handel-Mazzetti, the Austrian botanist, growing in western side-valleys of the Salween around 28° N, near the Burma frontier. From his coning specimens Gaussen described T. flousiana, but it is controversial whether the Sino-Burman trees are really sufficiently distinct from the Formosan type to merit specific rank.
Note. – In Vol. II of the present work, p. 491, it is stated that the wood of Juniperus recurva var. coxii was used for coffin-making by the Chinese, and the name ‘Coffin Juniper’ is given to this tree in most works devoted to the conifers. But C. W. D. Kermode, writing in Indian Forester, Vol. 65 (1939), pp. 204 et seq., points out that trees in the Maymyo Botanic Garden, Burma, introduced from the northeast frontier as J. recurva, were in fact the taiwania. Before the discovery and identification of the taiwania on the Burma-China frontier it seems to have been generally believed that the coffin tree was some species of giant juniper. According to Kermode’s enquiries J. recurva was not used for making coffins, and in view of his statement the name ‘Coffin Juniper’ for J. recurva var. coxii should perhaps be replaced by ‘Cox’s Juniper’ if a vernacular name is needed. But an element of doubt remains, since several species of tree with durable, aromatic timber were used by the Chinese for making coffins, and if J. recurva var. coxii was not so used in 1939 the reason may be that all suitable trees had been felled.