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← Advent Botany 2015 – Day 5: By Jove, its a walnut!
Advent Botany 2015 – Day 7: Saffron: A light in the darkness →

Advent Botany 2015 – Day 6: White Cedar

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Alastair Culham

By Dawn Bazely

Eastern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) is popular in garlands and ropes used for door and window decorations during the Christmas holiday season in Canada. White cedar  fronds are floppy, with scaly leaves rather than needles, so it’s not very good for use as a Christmas tree. My friend, Joanne, owner of Willem and Jools florist in Toronto, is holding a cedar garland at left.

Joanne, owner of Willem and Jools florist holding cedar garland
Joanne, owner of Willem and Jools florist holding cedar garland
Boxes of fresh cedar fronds for Christmas decorating
Boxes of fresh cedar fronds for Christmas decorating

White cedar would have been used to decorate historic Colborne Lodge when John and Jemima Howard lived there (left). But, because live and cut plants have a place everywhere in the world, it also fits in well with trendy shops, like Grateful Head, one of Toronto’s hippest hairdressers (right).

Christmas at Colborne Lodge
Christmas at Colborne Lodge
White cedar garlands at the grateful head
White cedar garlands at the grateful head

Well before European colonists arrived in North America, white cedar was hugely important in traditional Anishinabe culture as the major purifying plant. Jordan Paper (2007 ch. 8) describes its important role in the Anishinabe sweat lodge or Spirit Lodge, madodoswun, ceremony. The Anishinabe First Nation living in what is now the Greater Toronto Area when John Howard built Colborne were the Mississaugas. The Mississaugas First Nation is a strong and active community today, and a leader in advocating for urban trees.

Thuja occidentalis range map

Thuja occidentalis range map

The range of eastern white cedar extends from Canada’s boreal forest biome south into the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence ecozone of Ontario and Quebec. (Range map from “Atlas of United States Trees” U.S. Geological Survey digitized by Elbert L. Little, Jr.). The congeneric (same genus) species, western red cedar, Thuja plicata, occurs in British Columbia. Eastern white cedar does not grow nearly as tall as western red cedar.

White cedar grows in a wide range of habitats, from swamps to dry areas. In the winter white cedar stands provide important cover for white-tailed deer which “yard” or crowd into them. The snow is not as deep in these stands of trees, and the deer feed on the cedar branches.

The Last Stand: A Journey Through the Ancient Cliff-Face Forest of the Niagara Escarpment

The Last Stand: A Journey Through the Ancient Cliff-Face Forest of the Niagara Escarpment

White cedar can be very slow growing, and can survive in stressful habitats such as limestone cliff face nooks and crannies (Kelly & Larson, 1999). Botany professor, Doug Larson, now retired from Guelph University, studied white cedars along the Niagara Escarpment. He and his students found that some of these scraggly looking trees were 400 years old (Kelly & Larson 2000; Kelly and Larson 2007 The Last Stand: A Journey Through the Ancient Cliff-Face Forest of the Niagara Escarpment is all about this previously unrecognized unique forest ecosystem.

On a more pedestrian note, white cedar is a popular hedging plant. Unsuspecting homeowners plant small cedar trees in cute little hedges, which, when untended, grow into tall Canadian versions of the out-out-control British Leylandii hedge.

A white cedar hedge

A white cedar hedge

 

Split Rail Fencing

Split Rail Fencing

White cedar wood is brittle, and therefore, not much used for indoor furniture. But, the wood is durable and rot-resistant, so the trunks are commonly used for split rail fences, roofing shingles, and also for outdoor furniture.

Cedar-lined closets are popular in many Canadian homes, where they are used to protect clothes from moths. However, the research into the effectiveness of cedar-lined trunks and closets suggests that the any benefits have less to do with cedar volatiles protecting your textiles, and more to do with the sealed unit, into which one places moth-free textiles! If you’re already battling clothes moths, you will have more luck with buying a chest freezer for clothes storage, since it will actually kill the moth life stages.

2015-12-03 11.42.28 HDR

Grateful Head hairdresser with guitar on wall: photocredit Christopher Smith

So, there you have it: eastern white cedar, a plant of great cultural and historic significance for Canada’s First Nations and European colonists, with relevance in the trendiest places. It’s truly evergreen.

References

Kelly, P.E. and D.W. Larson. 1999. The Niagara Escarpment Ancient Tree Atlas Project; the hunt for Ontarioís oldest trees. Paper in Leading Edge ’99: Making Connections Conference Proceedings, 5. Toronto: Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources

Kelly, P.E. and Larson, D.W. 2000. An Ecological Assessment of the Long-Term Survival of Ancient Populations of Eastern White Cedars on Cliff Faces of the Niagara Escarpment. pp 275-281 in Pollock-Ellwand et al. eds. Proceedings of the Parks Research Forum of Ontario AGM 22-23 April1999. PRFO, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

http://casiopa.mediamouse.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/PRFO-1999-Proceedings-p275-281-Kelly-and-Larson.pdf

Kelly, P.E. and Larson, D.W. 2007. The Last Stand: A Journey Through the Ancient Cliff-Face Forest of the Niagara Escarpment. Dundurn Press, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Paper, J.D. 2007. Native North American Religious Traditions: Dancing for Life. Praeger Publishers. Westport CT USA.

Editor’ note: for other christmas trees see: Advent Botany 2014 – Day 15 and Advent Botany 2015 Day 1

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About Alastair Culham

A professional botanist and biologist with an interest in promoting biological knowledge and awareness to all.
View all posts by Alastair Culham →
This entry was posted in Advent, Herbarium RNG, Public Engagement with Science and tagged American arborvitae, arborvitae, eastern arborvitae, eastern white cedar, false white cedar, northern white cedar, swamp cedar, Thuja, Thuja occidentalis, White Cedar. Bookmark the permalink.
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Last reply was December 13, 2017
  1. Advent Botany – Day 6: White Cedar « Herbology Manchester
    View December 6, 2015

    […] Source: Advent Botany – Day 6: White Cedar […]

    Reply
  2. The Son of #AdventBotany 2015! | Dr M Goes Wild
    View December 6, 2015

    […] This is an exceprt of this blog, find the White Cedar advent botany blog at Culham Research Group […]

    Reply
  3. Whewell’s Gazette: Year 2, Vol. #21 | Whewell's Ghost
    View December 7, 2015

    […] Day 6: White Cedar […]

    Reply
  4. Advent Botany 2015 – Day 7: Saffron: A light in the darkness | Culham Research Group
    View December 8, 2015

    […] Botany 2015 Day 6, Day […]

    Reply
  5. #AdventBotany and Alien Abductions 😉 | Dawn Bazely: forthright, collaborative, interdisciplinary & fun
    View December 16, 2015

    […] Balsam fir White cedar Paperwhite […]

    Reply
  6. 2014 Advent Botany – Day 15 – the Christmas tree | Culham Research Group
    View December 8, 2016

    […] White Cedar […]

    Reply
  7. What Trees Talk About features the excellent research of Canadian ecologists | Bazely Biology lab: collaborative, interdisciplinary, fun
    View December 13, 2017

    […] If not, perhaps it will be on Netflix. Since it's advent season, you can read my 2015 posts about white cedar and balsam fir, at University of Reading's Advent Botany blog. Here's the […]

    Reply
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