I fell in love with the sound of the native American flute some years ago, so I bought one carved from a branch of red cedar and learned to play it. It has a lovely voice. The type of wood, I discovered, makes a big difference in the sound of the flute with cedar being preferred.
There are several mature cedar trees on Owl Acres as well as numerous seedlings in the fence rows. One of them has hosted a large Poison ivy vine for many years. The tree stands in the woods on the west side of the property amidst the maples, boxelders, and elms that make up most of these woods. A carpet of poison ivy flourishes at its feet.
What we call cedars are actually not related to the famous cedars of Europe and Asia such as the Cedars of Lebanon. Scientifically speaking, our cedars are actually tree-shaped versions of juniper bushes and shrubs. The scientific name of this tree is Juniperus virginiana. Eastern red cedars are native to North America. The first mention of them may have been in 1564 when two explorers landed on Roanoke Island off the Virginia coast. They declared the trees to be “the tallest and reddest cedars in the world,” and the name stuck.
So, we call it the eastern red cedar, or the aromatic cedar. The one in our woods is recovering from the poison ivy vine that used it as a scaffold for so many years. The foliage is returning to the south side of the tree where it had been blocked by the leaves of the aggressive vine.
The tree is maybe 60 feet tall, attesting to a long slow-growing life. It may live up to 400 years, outlasting its deciduous neighbors by centuries if it’s left undisturbed. Its trunk is gently fluted and covered with hairy, tan-colored peeling bark. Its branches grow straight out from the trunk. I can’t quite reach the lowest and largest branch. As the tree ages, it grows around these branches, encasing them in the trunk bit by bit, year by year. The result among other things is a proliferation of knots in the wood.
I have always thought of long thin needles or prickly, scratchy short ones when I think of evergreens. The Eastern Red Cedar doesn’t have that kind of needles, though. It has deep green leaves even in January. The leaves are tiny and flat, with a scaly surface. They are soft to the touch and grow in opposite pairs close to the twig in an overlapping scale-like pattern. The effect is rather like a soft green three-dimensional lace. They form fronds that invite me to put my face against them and inhale the delicious cedar scent. This is a female tree. We know this by the tiny blue berries hidden in its greenery. The berries are not true berries. They’re actually little fleshy cones with fused, overlapping scales. Inside are one or two seeds. Crushing one between my teeth, I get a touch of gin flavoring. It is actually a juniper berry after all. This berry is too dried to have much taste though.
The tree is getting ready for spring, even as it still holds some of last summer’s fruits. It has built another type of cone about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. A tan color now, the cone will burst open in May, and drop short sticky filaments to catch the pollen tossed on the wind by its male counterparts. The male trees for their part have built clusters of much smaller yellowish cones at the ends of their branches that will open and fling the fertilizing pollen on the wind. The cone-like flowers will give way to the little berries once again to feed winter birds or flavor home-made gin?
For millennia cedars have played an important role in the ecology and the lives of the people of the Americas. The wood of the red cedar is prized for its color, its strength, and its aromatic oils. The heartwood is a deep purplish-red, with streaks of yellow throughout. The sapwood is also yellow. The wood is close-grained and easy to work with hand and power tools. At one time, most pencils were made from red cedar because they worked well in pencil sharpeners. The smell of the oils in the wood, so prized for cedar chests, are repellant to many insects and prevent rot. This rot resistance makes it useful for fence posts, decks and other outdoor applications. Early colonists used it for fences, pails, buckets, tubs, doorsills, shingles, and ship-building because of its rot-resistance. Today we line our closets, and our cedar chests with it to keep the moths away.
The red cedar’s leaves, berries, wood and oils have been used as medicine to combat a long list of ailments. Teas made from the leaves, bark, roots and berries were brewed to ease cough, bronchitis, joint pain, water retention, and flatulence. Compresses applied to the skin have been used to treat wounds, skin rashes, hair loss, eczema, acne, warts, fungal skin infections, and hemorrhoids. It’s also used as a fragrance for soaps, perfumes, and cosmetics. You can also make a nice tea from the twigs, dry the berries for use in gin, or flavor grains or meat with it. No wonder it has been considered sacred by some native American traditions. Perhaps I’ll retrieve that flute from my closet and try again to sing a cedar love song to celebrate this amazing denizen of the woods.
Photo by Author