Ashe Juniper, aka Cedar, the tree Texans love to hate

February 17, 2020 7:45 AM

In winter months, many Texans come together to share hatred of a specific tree: the cedar (Texas Monthly, 1997), or more specifically Ashe Juniper (Juniperus ashei) (Native Trees of Texas). To some, it's an evil tree that attacks people with its pollen, drinks all the water and is a fire hazard (Texas Monthly, 2018). To others, it's a forager's dream, with medicinal and edible qualities (Foraging Texas), and long prized for their resistance to rot (Central Texas Gardener), mountain cedars were valued for fence posts, telephone poles, and homesteads. Elizabeth McGreevy, a Texan ecologist, challenges the myths about cedar, Texas’ most hated tree (Reporting Texas). You can read more at her website.
posted by filthy light thief (17 comments total)

Here’s an excuse to post one of my favorite informative posters, Native Trees of Central Texas. Texas love (and, per this article, sometimes hate) their trees.
posted by q*ben at 8:05 AM on February 17, 2020 [6 favorites]

These Texans should visit Lebanon.
posted by le_vert_galant at 8:12 AM on February 17, 2020 [4 favorites]

In the past we’d issue bird letters with technical advice on how to manage land if old-growth cedar was found and warblers or vireos were nesting there. But the Texas Farm Bureau thought that was inappropriate, so the service no longer issues letters.” Now it falls on the landowner to do the right thing.

Texas governing in action. The Texas Farm Bureau thought it was 'inappropriate' to let farmers know how to deal with cedar and these rare birds! What a bunch of goddamn blockheads.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:20 AM on February 17, 2020 [7 favorites]

Not sure I've ever managed to actually hate a tree. I've gotten bored of pine trees. I've gotten annoyed at those oak trees that put their little leaves everywhere. But I always figured, charge it to the game.
posted by thelonius at 8:39 AM on February 17, 2020 [3 favorites]

don't know that it rose to the level of hate, but NYC ginkos sure don't help the fragrance of the city
posted by kokaku at 8:41 AM on February 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

Japan reforested the hilly terrain west of Tokyo w/ cedar plantations. It did not go so well...
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:06 AM on February 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

in a possibly-apocryphal City of Austin document

I lived in Austin for 4 years, and I guarantee that the city is apocryphal, along, no doubt, with much of its paperwork.

I do remember days when 5 minutes standing outside could leave your face gritty with pollen.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:25 AM on February 17, 2020 [8 favorites]

For years running, every time I went to Austin for SXSW Interactive, I'd come home with a sinus infection. Then one year I felt fine the whole conference. I mentioned it in conversation wth a cab driver toward the end of my visit, and he said, "Oh, it's because the cedar hasn't bloomed yet."
posted by me3dia at 9:56 AM on February 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

It's true, Austin is mostly vapor and I can only assume a solid enough form to use a keyboard around twilight, on the last day of the season, or if I drink 3-4 cups of a special brew we make here called "coffee" that infuses my blood with loam.

I have often suspected that our special relationship to nature, also a key aspect of Austinite identity (set in opposition to, say, Houstonians and their special relationship to concrete) is founded on a patchwork of beliefs about nature that grew from suburban wilderness presented as natural but cultivated, like most things in Texas, by land developers.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 9:56 AM on February 17, 2020 [9 favorites]

The bit from her book has this

So, why do we hate the tree?

Well, for starters, there is cedar fever. You know, the winter time allergy that announces its descent upon our unwary nostrils with massive clouds of cedar pollen that plague us for weeks and months of itchy, snot nosed, feverish allergies? Oh yes, that. If ever there was an emotional reason to hate a tree, this would be it.

Another reason people don’t like mountain cedars is because they are so darn persistent and seem to grow everywhere, especially where you don’t want them...

On top of this frustration, landowners were informed about a decade ago that they could no longer clear their cedar because an endangered little bird really needs the bark of cedars to build its tiny nests. Of course, this wasn’t accurate since the government was only talking about federal land and cedars that were old-growth and therefore at least 25 years old. But, the reporter, who basically got everything wrong, had his article printed. This drove everyone into a frenzy, led by the Take Back Texas anti-government group, and stuck like a burr in the side of any landowner out there hell bent on protecting his property rights and developers trying to get higher prices by clear cutting to expose dramatic hilltop views.

The "little bird(s)" are golden-cheeked warblers and black-capped vireos. Other animals also depend on the tree; more info here.
posted by emjaybee at 10:30 AM on February 17, 2020 [7 favorites]

December through February brings massive sneezing and constant blowing of nose. I made my peace with the cedar pollen scourge when Puffs with Lotion became available. Now the raging red snot trail has been soothed into bearability. Mostly, I like the cedar trees anyway.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 10:43 AM on February 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

“... until we overgrazed the ranges, allowing opportunistic young cedars to replace much of the grassland ...

This is pretty much the crux of it. The over-grazing was devastating to the hill country. Topsoil has eroded away over most of the ridge tops & washed into all the karst features that drain water into the Edwards aquifer- it’s not at all today like it was before the introduction of cattle. From my experience, when pastureland is abandoned, the prickly pear cactus is the first thing to move in, followed quickly by the junipers. At this point, it can’t really be undone.

And yeah, I’m allergic as hell to the pollen. Thank the lord for giving the chemists the brains to invent Flonase. Without it I would have had to move 25 years ago.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:59 AM on February 17, 2020 [5 favorites]

If you haven't seen what it looks like when the cedar trees are treating your nose like a single's bar, it's really a sight. The pollen wafting off of them makes them look like they're on fire.
posted by adamrice at 12:07 PM on February 17, 2020 [9 favorites]

To add on to what Heywood Mogroot said, a week before my wedding, I woke up with one eye sealed shut with crusty eye-goo. I thought, oh, dear god, I’ve got pink eye a week before my wedding, this is terrible. I also could barely breathe, and my nose felt like it was stuffed with burning concrete.

I went to the doctor, and she looked at me and asked how long, at that point, had I lived in Japan. I said “eight years” and she outright laughed and said “you’ve got kafunsho, or the standard allergy to cedar pollen that 1480% of Japanese people have. February to roughly April in Japan is a hell of sniffling people desperate to breathe normally again. The cedar pollen allergy treatment industry is worth well over a billion dollars here. And, of course, with mild weather all “winter” it came even earlier this year.

I used to like all trees. I guess it was that uncritical thinking that they were all good and loved me back. Maybe I was influenced by The Giving Tree. I was wrong. Not all trees are deserving of love, especially not the ones that exist to cause pain. I’m going to write a children’s book about cedar trees. I shall call it The Hating Tree.
posted by Ghidorah at 2:34 PM on February 17, 2020 [5 favorites]

If the notion of deconstructing our hate for cedar (as Elizabeth McGreevy's approach is described) appeals to you, I recommend reading Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, which I was led to from reading the Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. Good for rethinking our relationship to nature, making it less a resource we act upon and more an entity that has different kinds of awareness than we do, and different agencies too.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 4:16 PM on February 17, 2020 [5 favorites]

I lived in Austin for two years during grad school. That first winter, I woke up one day unable to breathe, with sinus pain like I had never felt before. When I called in sick to work, my boss said, "Oh, hon, you're new here, you've got cedar fever!" Such misery.
posted by candyland at 6:17 PM on February 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

don't know that it rose to the level of hate, but NYC ginkos sure don't help the fragrance of the city

Dear lord I loathe those trees. Chop them all down and curse them. I'd rather have a rat standing on top of a rat standing on top of another rat holding up a fake tree branch than one of those stinkers.
posted by panama joe at 11:41 AM on February 18, 2020