Yo! I wrote this for my friend Dan’s blog Awkward Botany back in 2016. To see more of my earlier non-tree botany articles, check out Awkward Botany. I’ve re-posted it here because it fits with the general tree-related type of articles I publish here.
I recently asked this question to a professor of mine because I kept hearing individuals in the field refer to many different species as “cedars”. It was puzzling to me because, being the taxonomy-nerd that I am, most of these plants are in entirely different plant families but still called the same thing. Yes, sometimes common names overlap with one another regionally; avoiding that mix up is the purpose of binomial nomenclature in the first place! So, what gives?! Why are 50+ different species all called cedars?
This professor is a forester, not a botanist. He told me the word “cedar” describes the wood. Turns out, after some research and conversation, that’s all there was to it. As defined by Google, a cedar is:
Any of a number of conifers that typically yield fragrant, durable timber, in particular.
Cedar wood is a natural repellent of moths, is resistant to termites, and is rot resistant. A good choice of outdoor lumber.
I was hoping to find either a phylogenetic or taxonomic answer to what makes a cedar a cedar. I didn’t. Taxonomic relationships between organisms are one of the most exciting parts of biology. Thankfully, some solace was found in the research:
There are true cedars and false cedars. True cedars are ‘true’ because they are taxonomically in the Cedrus genus, whereas false cedars are ‘false’ because they are classified in other genera.
True cedars are in the family Pinaceae and in the genus Cedrus. Their leaves are short, evergreen needles in clusters. The female cones are upright and fat, between 3 – 4 inches long. Their wood possesses cedar quality, and they are native to the Mediterranean region and the Himalayas. Some examples of true cedars are atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica), deodar cedar (Cedrus deodara), and the cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani).
These are weeping cultivars of Cedrus atlantica ‘Glauca’, or weeping atlas cedar under our care. A true cedar. The needles are surprisingly soft despite their appearance.
False cedars are in the family Cupressaceae, mostly in the following genera: Calocedrus, Chamaecyparis, Juniperus, and Thuja. You might know some of them as northern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis, or ‘arborvitae’), eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana, or ‘juniper’), Alaska cedar (Cupresses nootkatensis), etc.. Their leaves are scaly, fan-like sprays. Female cones are very small, about half an inch long, and remain on the tree long after seed dispersal. The bark is often both reddish and stringy or peely. Their wood possesses cedar quality. It is easy to separate them from true cedars, but less obvious to tell them from one another. These false cedars are native to East Asia and northern North America.
Eastern red cedar (left), northern white cedar (middle), alaska cedar (right)
I couldn’t do away with the umbrella term “cedar.” Every naturalist can agree that one of the most pleasurable things while outdoors looking at plants is identifying them. I have set a new objective to correctly identify and differentiate between all of the cedars and false cedars, rather than simply calling them cedars. I guess I’m just fussy like that.