Small, medium-sized to sometimes large, monoecious evergreen trees, often with characteristically distinctively coloured or patterned bark, at first typically with a conical, tapering crown, but eventually widely open-crowned trees. Some become multi-trunked, and often eventually forming handsome tall-growing trees with foliage mainly in radially structured, clustered, bushy, open-billowing masses, and hence not arrayed into flattened sprays as in most Cupressus.