Eastern Red Cedar

Size, growth and what to expect

Ratings of its pace run from slow to fast, so our growth estimator takes the middle, about a foot and a half a year. It makes a narrow, pointed tree 30 to 50 feet tall and 10 to 20 feet wide, and on the best sites it can pass 100 feet. Trees first bear cones at about 10 years old, and some live more than 450 years.

Male trees shed clouds of yellow pollen from late winter into spring. On female trees, the berrylike cones ripen from green to frosted blue between September and November, about a quarter inch across. They hang on through winter, and waxwings, bobwhite, wild turkeys and many other birds eat them, along with foxes, raccoons and opossums. Its dense crown gives birds nesting and roosting cover, and it hosts the caterpillars of the juniper hairstreak.

It grows wild in every state east of the 100th meridian and north into southern Ontario and Quebec. Its home is old fields, fence rows, glades and limestone outcrops, and planted trees have spread it far across the Great Plains.

How to grow Eastern Red Cedar

Eastern red cedar wants full sun, and it takes shade only when young. It grows in almost any soil that drains, from sand and clay to thin, rocky ground over limestone, acid or alkaline. It stands drought, wind and salt spray, but not ground that stays wet. Plant it 15 feet from a wall, and set trees 12 feet apart for a screen and up to 24 feet apart as single trees. Keep it more than 50 feet from overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them in early spring, while they are still dormant, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the root flare at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the trunk. Sow cleaned seed thickly outdoors in fall, a quarter inch deep under mulch, since germination is often poor. Most of it comes up the second spring. For spring, keep it damp at room temperature for six weeks and then in the refrigerator for ten weeks first.

Water weekly through the first summer, then only in a long drought. Keep grass and weeds pulled back for the first two years. Deer browse it hard in lean winters, and mice and rabbits gnaw seedlings, so cage young trees where they are many. It needs little pruning, and early spring is the time for any.

Trees are male or female, and only females bear the berrylike cones, so plant three or more seedlings for a male and a female. The wind carries the pollen. It is the alternate host of cedar-apple rust and the related hawthorn and quince rusts, which do far more harm to their other host than to the cedar. Keep it a few hundred yards from apples, crabapples, hawthorns and serviceberries, including the ones we grow. Bagworms, mites and twig blights also turn up. The cones feed cedar waxwings and many other birds through winter. Eaten in quantity, the cones and leaves can cause diarrhea.