“Tree of Life” well adapted to northland

by KEVIN STRAUSS

Few trees have such an evocative name as Arborvitae “the tree of life.” Another common name for this tree is Northern White Cedar (Thuja occidentalis). Arborvitae got its name when French explorer Jacques Cartier and his crew were sailing up the St. Lawrence River in 1535-36. During the trip, the French didn’t have fruit to eat and began to develop scurvy, a sometimes fatal disease that people get from having a lack of Vitamin C. Luckily for the explorers, native people in that region taught the French how to drink a tea from the needles of the white cedar. Their symptoms disappeared and the French christened the white cedar “the tree of life” in Latin.

This evergreen has flat, scale-like 1/4-inch leaves and brown, stringy bark and a cone-shaped crown. They often grow on river and lake shores or the edges of bogs. But they can grown in a wide variety of habitats, especially places with more basic (alkaline)soil, like limestone rock outcroppings.

While Cartier named the tree on the basis of how it helped him and his crew, the name is also indicatative of the tree’s tenacity and ability to survive where nothing else can. White cedars cling to steep cliffs above rivers on Minnesota’s north shore. It grows on almost bare rock islands. And if a wind blows a cedar down, it doesn’t necessarily die. The tree will send more roots down into the ground and keep growing even with its trunk lying on the forest floor. Branches grow up into air, making new trunks. Branches will also put roots down into the ground and send new tree shoots up into the air. What’s more, those downed trunks and stumps also provide idea growing media for cedar seeds, when sister cedars drop them. Termed “nurse logs” these fallen and eventually rotting logs hold water better than thin northern soils and the rotting trunks provide nutrients for the growing seedlings. In one study of white cedar seedlings, fallen cedar trees provided seedbeds for three quarters of all seedlings, even though they covered only 16 percent of the forest floor.

While white cedars are not fast-growing trees, they do live a long time. Several cedars have 1,000 years of growth rings. The record northern white cedar in Minnesota is a giant on the Little Fork River in Koochiching County is 82 feet tall and is 11 feet in circumference. But size isn’t the only indication of the age of a tree. Some cedars, growing on limestone cliffs in Ontario have growth rings showing 1,032 years of growth, while the tree had a diameter of less than two inches.

Many animals, including squirrels and deer feed on cedar leaves and seeds. Deer often create a “browse line” at about six feet above the snow. This is as high as deer can reach and they eat the the cedar leaves up to that level.

In addition to growing in wild areas, many homeowners and landscapers choose arborvitae for landscaping projects. So the next time you are in the woods, keep an eye open for Cartier’s “tree of life.” On windy winter days, this wind-blocking evergreen lives up to its name.