Western red-cedar (RC)
Thuja plicata
We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use forestresearch.gov.uk, remember your settings and improve our services.
We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.
Preparing to search
Thuja plicata
Native to the Pacific north-west of America with a wide range from Alaska to California and also inland to the Cascade Mountains.
Limited provenance testing suggests that seed sources from western Washington or Vancouver Island should be preferred.
A shade tolerant species with good vigour and volume production, although early growth can be slow. Best suited to more humid regions with an annual rainfall of > 800 mm. Cold hardy throughout Britain, moderately frost tolerant, does not withstand exposure, but is moderately drought tolerant. Vulnerable to fungal attack in nurseries which historically has restricted planting stock availability. Grows best on medium to very rich soils with fresh to moist soil moisture but will tolerate calcareous soils if grown under light shelter. Not suited to very poor and very dry soils but will grow on gleys and occurs on some peat soils in its natural range. Can be grown in mixture with a range of conifer and broadleaved species.
Markedly susceptible to Armillaria (honey fungus) as a cause of decay and death, and to Heterobasidion (Fomes root and butt rot) as a cause of decay. Cypress aphid (Cinara cupressivora) is a not uncommon cause of foliage browning on western red cedar.
A shade tolerant species suited to regeneration or underplanting under continuous cover forestry silviculture. There is also growing recognition it has a place in upland forest diversification and is consequently being more widely planted.
Western red-cedar is categorised as a Secondary tree species. These are species that have been planted on a much smaller scale than the principal species but are reasonably well understood and have demonstrated their suitability for forestry in terms of stem form, growth rate and hardiness under current conditions and so have potential for wider use in future.
Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to store information about how you use the dwi.gov.uk website, such as the pages you visit.
Find out more about cookies on forestresearch.gov.uk
We use 3 types of cookie. You can choose which cookies you're happy for us to use.
These essential cookies do things like remember your progress through a form. They always need to be on.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about: how you got to the site the pages you visit on forestresearch.gov.uk and how long you spend on each page what you click on while you're visiting the site
Some forestresearch.gov.uk pages may contain content from other sites, like YouTube or Flickr, which may set their own cookies. These sites are sometimes called ‘third party’ services. This tells us how many people are seeing the content and whether it’s useful.