Thuja occidentalis

Thuja occidentalis, also known as northern white-cedar, eastern white-cedar, or arborvitae, is an evergreen coniferous tree, in the cypress family Cupressaceae, which is native to eastern Canada and much of the north-central and northeastern United States. It is widely cultivated as an ornamental plant. It is not to be confused with Juniperus virginiana (eastern red cedar). Its additional common names include swamp cedar, American arborvitae, and eastern arborvitae. The name arborvitae is particularly used in the horticultural trade in the United States; it is Latin for 'tree of life' – due to the supposed medicinal properties of the sap, bark, and twigs. It is sometimes called white-cedar (hyphenated) or whitecedar (one word) to distinguish it from Cedrus, the true cedars. Unlike the closely related western red cedar (Thuja plicata), northern white cedar is only a small or medium-sized tree, growing to a height of tall with a trunk diameter, exceptionally to tall and diameter. The tree is often stunted or prostrate in less favorable locations. The bark is red-brown, furrowed and peels in narrow, longitudinal strips. Northern white cedar has fan-like branches and scaly leaves. The foliage forms in flat sprays with scale-like leaves long. The seed cones are slender, yellow-green, ripening to brown, long and broad, with six to eight overlapping scales. They contain about eight seeds each. The branches may take root if the tree falls. The species was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. Over 30 synonyms are listed in Kew's Plants of the World Online database. Northern white cedar is native to an area in the southern part of eastern Canada and the adjacent part of the northern United States. It extends from southeastern Manitoba east throughout the Great Lakes region and into Ontario, Québec, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Isolated populations occur in west-central Manitoba, and to the south in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, and Illinois and in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.

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Related concepts (5)

Quebec

Quebec (k(w)ɪˈbɛk ; kwəˈbɛk ; Québec kebɛk) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is the largest province by area and the second-largest by population. Much of the population of Quebec lives in urban areas along the St. Lawrence River, between its most populous city, Montreal, and the provincial capital, Quebec City. The province is the home of the Québécois nation.

Larix laricina

Larix laricina, commonly known as the tamarack, hackmatack, eastern larch, black larch, red larch, or American larch, is a species of larch native to Canada, from eastern Yukon and Inuvik, Northwest Territories east to Newfoundland, and also south into the upper northeastern United States from Minnesota to Cranesville Swamp, West Virginia; there is also an isolated population in central Alaska. The word akemantak is an Algonquian name for the species and means "wood used for snowshoes".

Cupressaceae

Cupressaceae is a conifer family, the cypress family, with worldwide distribution. The family includes 27–30 genera (17 monotypic), which include the junipers and redwoods, with about 130–140 species in total. They are monoecious, subdioecious or (rarely) dioecious trees and shrubs up to tall. The bark of mature trees is commonly orange- to red- brown and of stringy texture, often flaking or peeling in vertical strips, but smooth, scaly or hard and square-cracked in some species.