Simple trick to tell species apart

I HAVE A friend who lives in a small Georgian house.

Actually he’s a ‘country neighbour’ because he lives about 10km away. Growing in the lawn in front of his house is a magnificent Cedar of Lebanon.

It’s a massive, flat-topped tree with a huge trunk from which great side branches emerge low down, arching upwards and bending down again towards the ground. The dark green needles are arranged in tiers so that, from a distance, the foliage seems to be arranged in a series of plates.

This is a typical shape for a Cedar of Lebanon growing on a lawn or in open parkland. But I’ve seen them growing wild in groves in coniferous woodland on mountains and here they tend to be taller and more upright.

It’s quite a rare tree in the wild because it was over-exploited for its timber in past centuries. Its native range are mountains in Cyprus, Lebanon, Syria and parts of Turkey. The numbers on Mount Lebanon dropped to about 300 old specimens with no natural regeneration, but recent conservation measures have halted the slow slide towards extinction.

It used to be far more widespread and it’s believed that it provided the timber used by King Solomon to build the Temple in Jerusalem. The timber is strong and its aroma is a natural insect repellent, which could have been useful in a temple.

It’s a long-lived species and some older specimens in the Middle East were probably alive at the time of Christ. Certainly one tree-ring count from Lebanon has given an age of 2,500 years and some authorities believe that the species could have a maximum life expectancy of anything up to 4,000 years.

Of course, the one in my friend’s garden is nothing like that old.

The first specimens arrived in these islands some time before 1638. This is the earliest known planting date for a tree in England. But a cold winter in 1740 killed off almost all the trees planted before that date.

After that expeditions collected seed from specimens growing at high altitudes in their native mountains. This seed produced a much more frost-resistant strain and meant that the tree also became popular in the northern United States. Much of this popularity had to do with its Biblical associations.

I suspect that my friend’s tree was planted at the same time as his house was built, which would make it a youngster of about 215.

There are really only three true cedars in the world, though many other trees with aromatic timber bear the name. The timber marketed as cedar in this country comes from an American tree called the Western Red Cedar, which is not a true cedar at all.

The other two true cedars are the Atlas Cedar or Atlantic Cedar and the Himalayan Cedar or Deodar. The Atlas Cedar comes from mountains in Algeria and Morocco. It has a sub-species with silver-blue foliage that is sold in garden centres in this country and is the most widely-planted cedar in Ireland today. It’s sometimes sold as Blue Atlas Cedar and sometimes as ‘Glauca’, the Latin name of the sub-species.

Some authorities regard the smaller Cedars of Lebanon that grow in the Tripylos Mountains on Cyprus as another separate sub-species.

The Himalayan Cedar comes from the western end of the range and should probably be planted more often as a garden ornamental. Although, like all the true cedars, it’s slow growing and long-lived, it’s particularly attractive when it’s young.

All three species are similar, but there’s a simple trick for telling them apart that works most of the time. Look at the ends of the branches and remember: Atlas — Ascending, Lebanon — Level, Deodar — Descending.

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