Highlights

Cedars are wonderful trees and the eastern red cedar is a wonderful tree, but it isn't a cedar. It is a juniper. There aren't any native cedars (Cedrus is the genus) in North America. Eastern red cedar is found from southern Ontario to the Gulf of Mexico and from the eastern edge of the Great Plains to the Atlantic. It is absent from south Florida.

Red cedar is a slow-growing early successional evergreen tree commonly found growing in old pastures, the upland edge bordering salt marshes, by the side of country roads and along highways in full sun. Unfortunately most of the old pastures in southeastern Massachusetts are now sprouting houses, or more recently solar panels, rather than red cedars.

A medium size tree, most red cedars around here are generally 20 to 40 feet tall. Under ideal growing conditions in rich, well-drained soil they may reach 80 feet in height. If not encumbered by surrounding vegetation they are usually pyramidal in shape with dense, dark green foliage almost to the ground leaving only a short section of the reddish-brown trunk visible. Young red cedars have leaves different from those on older trees. As seedlings they have sharp, spiky leaves. After a few years the trees begin putting out softer scale-like leaves arranged along the stem in pairs, each pair at right angles to the adjacent pair. 

Red cedars are dioecious trees. Some are male and some are female. Male trees produce tiny yellowish-brown cones that open in March releasing their pollen to the wind. Once fertilized by the pollen the even smaller female flowers develop into blue, waxy, berry-like cones. Each cone usually contains two to three seeds. The berry-like cones hang on the tree through the winter and a cone-laden female red cedar is an important food source for many seed-eating birds and small mammals. The seeds in the cones usually pass, unharmed, through the critter that ate them providing an easy method of seed dispersal. Red cedar foliage is so dense that it proves winter shelter and protection from predators to many song birds. Wintering robins, ruffed grouse and mourning doves are three species that commonly roost in red cedar on cold, winter nights.

Although a juniper, red cedar wood is fragrant like a true cedar. Light and fine-grained the aromatic tan sapwood to red heartwood repels clothes moths and other insects and has been used since colonial times in making “cedar” chests and closets. The natural aromatic oils also make the wood rot resistant and it is often used for fence posts. Red cedar wood was also used by Eastern Woodland Indians to make flutes and game calls. They also wove the fibrous bark into clothing, hats, mats and other utilitarian objects. Before cheaper, imported wood and advanced manufacturing methods came along, red cedar was the preferred wood for making pencils. In 1837, after Harvard but before heading for Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau joined the family business making pencils out of red cedar heartwood.

Although common juniper (Juniperus communis) provides the traditional juniper “berry” used to flavor gin, red cedar may be substituted. Red cedar's aromatic oil is also used in various medicines and in aromatherapy. Our common red cedar is a remarkable tree. Next time you walk by one, don't forget to smile and introduce yourself.

Although you won’t see any of this size in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve, hemlocks can grow to a height of over 150 feet with trunks over 6 feet in diameter. They grow very slowly and do not produce seed cones until at least 20 years old. Some do not reach maturity and bear cones until over 100 years old. Large specimens can be over 1,000 years old. 

Unfortunately our hemlocks are under extreme stress, many dying, from attacks by the Asian hemlock woolly adelgid. The invasive woolly adelgid is a very serious threat to the continued survival of the hemlock and those species that depend on the hemlock.

Eastern hemlock have short, flat needles, a half inch to an inch long, dark green above with two narrow white lines running the length of the needle’s underside. The needles are attached to their twig by a slender stalk. Tiny flowers are produced in spring with inch long cones ripening in the fall and releasing seed during the winter. Many winter birds and small forest rodents depend on hemlock seeds as a winter food source.

The eastern hemlock grows best in damp, acidic soil from extreme southern Ontario and Quebec east to Nova Scotia. From Nova Scotia south along the Atlantic coast to New Jersey and then inland following the Appalachian Mountains to extreme northern Georgia and Alabama. To the west, the hemlock range extends south from southern Ontario to eastern Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and then down the western side of the Appalachians. On the northern edge of their range whitetail deer depend on eastern hemlock for food and/or shelter. Dense stands of hemlock slow the accumulation of winter snow beneath them. When heavy snows, frigid temperatures and strong winds buffet our northern forests small family groups of deer gather at these hemlock stands, called “deer yards,” for shelter, feeding and bedding. Young, dense hemlocks also provide food and shelter for snowshoe hare and various species of forest voles and mice.

A fortifying tea can be made from hemlock needles. And, no, this is not the “hemlock” Socrates drank. Socrates’ death-sentence drink was concocted from poison hemlock, Conium maculatum, an herbaceous plant, not a tree. 

Not that long ago hemlock bark was rendered for tannin, which was widely used for tanning leather prior to the development of various chemical methods which require less labor and are more economically advantageous. There are numerous insect species that feed on hemlock. Only two of these are capable of killing their host. One of these is the previously mentioned alien hemlock woolly adelgid and the other is the native hemlock borer which preys on weakened hemlocks often killing woolly adelgid compromised trees. Old eastern hemlocks and hemlock stumps and logs occasionally nurture an interesting and much sought after medicinal fungus. The hemlock varnish shelf polypore, Ganoderma tsugae, is very closely related to the highly valued Asian “miracle” mushroom reishi or ling chi/lingzhi, Ganoderma lucidum. Both mushroom species contain triterpenes, polysaccharides and sterols and both can be made into a “tea” reportedly containing immunotherapeutic properties, anti-tumor inhibitors and enhancers for anti-viral and antibacterial activity.

One can easily see the eastern hemlock is a species we do not want to lose. Unfortunately, like the American elm, American chestnut and various other native species, that have been extirpated from vast areas of their natural range by introduced insects and diseases, the future is not bright for this grand American tree.