Northern White-Cedar: The Tree of Life

The northern white-cedar is an introvert, patient, fragile, tenacious, resilient, and resourceful tree that has been valued by Native Americans for its lightweight, rot-resistant wood and medicine. Its future is uncertain, but scientists call on all of us to unite to help it to thrive.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 200 pages
Publication date: 01 July 2022
Publisher: Michigan State University Press

The northern white-cedar, if it had a personality, would be an introvert. It is modest, often appearing small in stature with narrow crowns. It is patient, slowly growing beneath the canopy of larger trees. It is fragile, with weak wood prone to decay when living. However, just as people possess hidden depths, so too does the northern white-cedar. It is persistent, rapidly growing to take advantage of canopy openings when they occur. It is tenacious, living for centuries or even a millennium. It is resilient, thriving even with a high proportion of rotten wood, and resourceful, finding places to live where other trees struggle. It continually reinvents itself with branches that grow roots when resting on moist ground.

People have long valued this tree. Native Americans used its lightweight, rot-resistant wood to make woven bags, floor coverings, arrow shafts, and canoe ribs. They extracted medicine from the leaves and bark to treat various illnesses. A Haudenosaunee decoction of northern white-cedar is credited with saving the French explorer Jacques Cartier's crew from scurvy, and the French dubbed it larbre de vie: the tree of life. This tree similarly gives life to many creatures in North American forests, while providing fence posts, log homes, and shingles to people.

But the northern white-cedars future is uncertain. Here, scientists Gerald L. Storm and Laura S. Kenefic describe the threats to this modest yet essential member of its ecosystem and call on all of us to unite to help it thrive.

Weight: 394g
Dimension: 151 x 228 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781611864281