Southern Red Cedar

I live near the beach, and Southern Red Cedar is one of the most reliably salt-tolerant trees in a maritime environment. These trees gro...Read Morew nearer to the ocean than any other tree, though they are smaller as they get closer to salt water. They are also very tolerant of flooding as we learned two years ago when Hurricane Florence put our property under three feet of brackish water for over a week. When happy, they are tall and dense and they make excellent screen trees; birds are attracted to them as protection from predators - they are "escape hides". This tree is definitely different (better) than normal red cedar in terms of drought resistance and heat tolerance; I have grown both species side by side, and southern red cedar does much better in coastal southern North Carolina. Apparently some scientists think it is a different species than Eastern Red Cedar.

Growing out of my 100 year old Silver Maple Tree is what looks like an Eastern Redcedar (Juniperus Virginiana).
Like a parasite, t...Read Morehis tree looks as if it were feeding off the Maple as if it were making a personal statement for me to understand, for my eyes only. What adds to the oddity of the site, and I know this sounds strange, perhaps strange enough to have me examined, is the fact that before my biotech genius brother in-law took his own life, he taught me that Conifers compete with deciduous compete for growing space. He further went on to explain that every 500,000 years, one dominates the other, bringing each to the brink of extinction. His statement prevented me from weeding it out when I first discovered it at one inch high,12 years ago, as it made me think of him. Yesterday I plucked from its branch something which resembled a small nut, oblong in shape with small and stiff hair like shoots protruding from it. Curiously I placed it outside on my work table as it began to rain. In the morning I discovered a rubbery like hideous fungus, as shown in the picture, and remembered having placed the nut there. Right away, I knew it had metamorphosed into this. Im trying to identify what this is. Is it part of the conifer or is it a fungus of some type which grew on one of its branches?

Native here and across north Florida, formerly in vast numbers (Cedar Key is named for them; most were cut down and used to make pencils)...Read More. Fairly fast growth, fairly trouble-free; I have not seen cedar-apple fungus on them here, but apples are not common and I don't know if it affects e.g. hawthorns. Like many of the genus, often associated with limestone underlying the soil, but that's hardly necessary. There certainly are a lot near Ocala, where the Ocala Limestone formation is just under the surface and where that makes the land prized for horse farms -- just as I noted a lot of J. virginiana in the Kentucky Bluegrass country on a visit there. The wood looks to me just like that of the usual J. virginiana, aromatic and rather soft, with white sapwood and red-brown to purple heartwood including some white streaks, rot-resistant, knotty except in wide boards from the now-rare old trees. Seems to tolerate both seasonally-soggy soil and drought.

Southern Red Cedar Juniperus virginiana var. silicicola is native to Texas and other States.