is for Cedar–
did someone say…?

Once upon a time, there was a crafty wood wizard who built a lovely chest of drawers out of cedar. His beloved wife rubbed a bit of cedarwood oil inside the drawer boxes, and to bless the project, they burned some California cedar incense to send their prayers to the spirit world.

Would you believe that each of the three times I just used the word cedar, I was referring to three distinct trees?

One at a Time

The cedar used for the chest of drawers was our local Thuja plicata, also known as Western red cedar and giant arborvitae (“tree of life”). The wood for the project came from trees on our land here in northern Idaho.

The red cedarwood oil we used was an essential oil from a large herb company who listed its source as Juniperus virginiana, which is also known as Eastern redcedar, Carolina cedar, Virginia cedar, pencil cedar, red juniper, and red savin. This same herb company also offered cedar leaf oil, Thuja occidentalis, sometimes called American arborvitae or white cedar; and yet another oil, Atlas cedar, Cedrus atlantica, also known as Blue Atlas cedar, which is closely related to Cedar of Lebanon, C. libani, and inspiration to Kahlil Gibran, beloved author of The Prophet.

The aromatic California incense cedar is botanically known as Calocedrus (“false cedar”) decurrens. At one time, botanists gave this tree the genus name Libocedrus, but genetic differences were discovered in the early twentieth century among specimens found around the Pacific Rim, and so the name was changed to reflect this observation.

Be it known that no “true cedars”—genus Cedrus—are native to North America. True cedars are native to the eastern Mediterranean, northern Africa, and the Himalayas. True cedars have needlelike leaves, similar to a Larix, also known as larch or tamarack, in appearance, even though the larch is deciduous (a conifer that loses its needles). True cedar is quite dissimilar to our local Thuja cedar with their scalelike leaves.

Are You Kidding Me?

To make matters more confusing, the widespread Rocky Mountain juniper, Juniperus scopulorum, is sometimes called Rocky Mountain red cedar because of its strong resemblance to its eastern cousin J. virginiana. Then there are its other cousins J. communsis, or common juniper, and the locally regional (local to me at least) J. occidentalis, or western juniper, which mostly hangs out with sagebrush (a whole ’nother saga) and the stately ponderosa pine. There is even a tree known as Alaska cedar, Chamaecyparis nootkatensis, sometimes called Nootka false cypress, yellow cedar, and Alaska yellow cedar, which restricts itself to the northern Pacific coastal areas.

Could You Please Make Up Your Mind?

Some herb crafters sell smudge bundles that often contain cedar and sage. Now, the sage could be of the genus Artemisia, or it could be Salvia, to which our common garden sage (think turkey stuffing) belongs. (See “S is for Sage,” page 248, for more about this venerable herb.) However, since many smudge bundles come from the Southwest, the cedar is likely to be one of the many species of juniper, at least six of which grow in New Mexico. Because neither plants nor animals acknowledge arbitrary human boundaries (and therefore cross state lines), it is possible that the smudge bundle could actually be a juniper and sagebrush (Artemisia) bundle. Nevertheless, people will continue to call juniper “cedar” and arborvitae “cedar,” while calling the false cedar and the false cypress both “cedar” as well.

I’m So Confused …

Aside from burning the leaf as a healing smoke, cedar has been used in other ways as medicine (see page xxi, “Author’s Note On Taking Herbal Remedies,” for how I define this term). Some Native Americans used Thuja as a tea for headache, and the leafy branches were simply moistened, warmed, and laid to the forehead—I really like this idea. Native women were also known to use a tea of the inner bark to promote menstruation. (Please be advised that the essential oil from any type of cedar is abortive and can be extremely toxic; do not use internally under any circumstances.) As for the junipers, Native people in the Missouri River region used the leaf and berries as a decoction for colds and coughs, and sometimes inhaled the smoke from it for the same purpose. While Blackfoot Indians used juniper berries as a treatment for kidney ailments, herbalist Michael Moore says, “Juniper should not be used where there is a kidney infection or chronic kidney weakness,” as the natural oils could be “uselessly irritating.”

Crafting soaps, candles, potpourri, insect repellents, incense, salves, and ointments is a good way to use cedar of any type, as the aroma is quite wonderful, and it is a useful antiseptic. You can make a cedar salve by gently simmering the leaves in olive oil until rich and fragrant, then adding beeswax to thicken. See “The Kitchen Apothecary,” page 3, for details on making herbal salves.

Cedar Is a Tone Wood

Alaska yellow cedar (Chamaecyparis) is very popular for making Native American–style hand drums. The wood is skillfully bent into a round frame, and wet rawhide is stretched across it to make a drum that you strike with a beater. The diameter and depth of the frame determine the tone of the drum, as do the thickness and type of the dried rawhide skin. Besides furniture, the wood wizard (aka my husband) also built a guitar with Western red cedar for the top of the body (the sides are big leaf maple). He found the wood out in the creek after winter washed a large stump down from the mountains, left over from a logging operation many years ago. I am so lucky that my partner the wizard is skilled in the ways of wood and can turn what looked like a washed-up hunk of rip-rap into an enduring musical instrument.

Prayers Sent on Smoke

If you like to burn incense or smudge for sacred or even practical reasons, the cedars and junipers, by whatever name you call them, might be your first choice. Use the smoke to consecrate your work and yourself with a tradition older than memory, facilitating the creation of blessed energy here and now.