- Eastern red cedar is a dioecious evergreen tree, meaning the individual plants are either male or female based on the cones produced. Male trees supply windborne pollen when the branches are filled with thousands of tiny golden brown cones in early to midspring. Female trees' cones are small, light green and round, but mature light gray-blue. Only fertilized female cones produce seeds. Both male and female cones are present by early fall, but remain dormant and do not further develop until the spring, when they become active.
- An eastern red cedar matures with a dense, columnlike or broad pyramidal silhouette. It potentially reaches dimensions 40 to 100 feet tall and 15 to 25 feet wide. Trees as young as 10 years old may begin to produce seeded cones. Although red cedars yield cones and seeds annually, larger cone and seed production occurs in cycles of every two to three years.
- While pollen reaches female red cedar cones in early to midspring, it takes another two months before the pollen grain reaches the ovary inside the female cone for fertilization and seed formation. Across the summer, the female tree's branches bear thousands of small light-green and fleshy cones that look like miniature pea-berries. Eventually, they attain a size of 1/5 inch and the flesh dries and hardens to an attractive bluish color. The seeds inside are ripe by fall, but these berry cones persist on the boughs unless stripped by hungry wildlife. The cones finally crack open to naturally drop the seeds the next spring.
- The bluish berries on the red cedar are not themselves the seeds, but house one to four seeds inside. By the time the berry cones mature to gray-blue at the end of fall, the cone's flesh is full of a tacky resin that will further dry out and flake apart in March or April. Each brown seed is barely 1/10 inch in size, with either a rounded or angular shape. A thick, pitted, bony seed coat encases the plant embryo inside.
previous post