A small village called Bajie, close to the City of Nyingchi is famous for its forest of 900 giant cypress trees. The mean height of these trees is 44 meters and mean diameter 1,5 meters. Professor Qi-Bin Zhang from the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, explains this forest to be a relict forest originating to the period about 4600 years ago, when today almost treeless Southern Tibet Uplands was coverered by a dense forest. Why did the forest disappear that time? Was it climate change? No, just grazing and forest cutting!

A crooked path leads to the roots of the most magnificent tree in China : King of Cypress. My first encounter with this six meters thick, 50 meters high tree and 2600 years old tree is gorgeous!

King of Cypress, declared holy, is believed to be Shinrab Miba’s life tree. Miba was establisher of Lama Buddhism. I honour this tree so much that I am even afraid to hug it! Well, hugging would be difficult in any case, because its circumference, 18 m, exceeds over tenfold my fathom!

Juniperus communis, our home juniper species in Finland , belongs to the same family as Tibetan cypress. Finnish juniper, however, looks a dwarf in size compared to its Tibetan cousin. But talking in terms of range distribution (most widely spread conifer species in the world) and age (1100 years), there is no reason why it should not be included in this “royal” cypress family.