Saturday, October 17, 2009

Arborvitae

The flattened sprays of scale-like leaves make Thuja occidentalis easily recognizable. These immature cones will open up and brown as they ripen.

Arborvitae (meaning "tree of life") gets its common name from the medicinal properties of the bark and twigs. It's also called Northern white cedar.

This arborvitae has outgrown (or has been trained out of) the typically conical shape.

Heavy winds or loose soil might have caused this specimen to fall over.

Now each branch is like a mini-tree. Or, as a friends says, it's a single-tree forest of arborvitae.

1 comment:

  1. We had this kind of tree right outside our back door growing up. I must have patted my hand on this bark -- or fiddlingly pulled off strips of it -- every day of my life as a child.

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