I'm willing to bet that somewhere in your neighborhood, maybe even in your own yard, you have a juniper hedge or our Bervide hedge like the one behind me. And if so, you've already met our next plant family. It's the Cypress family. These are other evergreen conifers, so they make cones just a little smaller than the pine cones, and they have really small leaves, kind of look like little scales. Altogether in Washington State, there are five native species from the Cypress family. In three genera, which you see pictured here, a lot of them are referred to as cedars, whether red cedar, yellow cedar, even junipers, sometimes are called cedars. So the Cypress family is found with the pine family in the conifer group of the gymnast berms. And the only other one in Washington State is the U family, which I actually won't talk about. The rest are mostly families found in the southern hemisphere. As I said before, these are evergreen, so their trees are shrubs, so they're woody. Their leaves are scale-like, you can see them over here. They look like reptile scales. The arrangement is opposite or world, but that's really hard to tell sometimes. The cones, male cones are the end of branches, and are really, really small. The female cones, not much bigger about size of a thumbnail, maybe. On junipers, a lot of times these are called berries, and they look and feel fleshy, but they're really cones that are just fleshy cones. A quick overview of how to tell the Cypress family members apart. This is by habitat, as well as the cones and the leaves. First, if you're in a dry habitat, whether this out in the shrubs, a step desert plateau, or even up in a dry forest area, and if you have leaves that are all shaped, or even these really small scales, and definitely if you have cones that look more like fleshy berries, then you have a juniper. If you're in a forest, and you see tall trees, or sometimes even really short ones, usually with weeping branches, they have scale-like leaves and cones with these spikes on them, then you have a yellow cedar. If you're in a wet habitat, either a really wet forest, a seap, or a streamside, and you have these scale-like leaves and cones that are a little more egg-shaped, then you have a red cedar. Let's explore the junipers first. So if you have a juniper that is a tree, like this one here, rounded in appearance, maybe slightly egg-shaped, and if you're wondering around an eastern Washington, this is definitely a western juniper. Taking a closer look over here, the leaves, really small scales. See how tight they are? They're in worlds. They have these little white dots all over the place that's just a waxy coating. Their berries are even coated in wax, so that that whitish coating around the blueberry is also wax. Now, these really, really tiny male cones at the end of the branches. So there's western juniper. Also has that just classic juniper smell. That's probably distinctive if you're familiar with it. Somewhat like a pine tree, a little more earthy and a lot less fruity. There's only one other tree juniper, and that's the rocky mountain juniper that you would find in Washington State, really more over on the western side of the state. If you're wondering around in the forest, especially in some of the drier slopes, you'll probably come across the common juniper. Really low-growing shrub never gets very tall. You may have passed by at 100 times and never even known it was there. It's pretty inconspicuous. Again, like those drier slopes, although you'll find it in the understory of forests sometimes as well. Here's a nice clear shot at those leaves. A little more needle-like, but the same sort of whitish berries blue if you rub off that waxy coating of the western juniper. Another look at this one again, that dull green color, but that matte forming plant does well and just gets buried into the snow all winter. And then these leaves, these are the leaves that are referred to as all shaped. What do you mean all shaped? You know, an all. That tool that you poke things with, I know, I don't get it either. When it's referred to as all shaped, then essentially it's kind of like a needle, but a little bit narrower. So that's just a common term you'll see in botany books. Maybe it's a little old-fashioned. I don't know that it's the best description, but that's the what it refers to. Our next species is a beautiful tree. It's really dramatic. It's got a straight trunk, but often these interesting curved branches with the drooping sprays of leaves coming down. You've probably seen it in landscapes around. The trouble it seems to have is finding a name that works. So this is the current name from the Burke Museum website. Its genus has gone from compresses to caliosedras to a variety of others. So that's wonderful. And even the common name is known as Alaska Cedar, Yellow Cedar, Alaska Nieloseater, Newt Cucedar, you name it. We'll just call it the Alaska Nieloseater for now. Fairly easy to identify, especially if you have the cones. So the spiky six-sided ball that dries out in each of those sides basically becomes this little pig in the seeds from inside fall out. The foliage is found in these flattened sprays. So it's not arranged that way, just laying on the desk flat because that's how they are. Even in nature they're always very droopy and they can be small trees. That's often how I find them like this or they can be larger. Taking a closer look at the foliage over here, the pattern is pretty simple on this one. So the leaves are opposite. There's this triangular leaf here, that scale, and another one on the opposite side. There's one over here and one opposite to it. So they just keep coming out and opposite. Pear is all along. They're always drooping like this. Very subtle. They're always in these flattened sprays. So each little group of them is flattened. And usually the tip of the branch just bends down really just kind of gracefully. As much as their appearance is graceful, their smell is not. They have kind of a skunky aroma. So kind of like cedar or juniper, but quite a bit more skunky. I very often find these along stream courses or areas where you might get avalanches or covered by a lot of snow and their smaller trees. That flexibility helps them there. But they can get very, very large and that bark becomes furrowed and light gray over time. Next is the western red cedar. An immensely important plant to the native peoples of the northwest, probably because of this fibrous bark that could be pounded out into fairly soft textiles for clothing and other materials. This is a pretty large tree. You can get up to a couple hundred feet tall here. And you can see the branches are somewhat sparse, although in a nicer habitat than it's a little more lush. Similar to all the rest of the members of this family, those scale-like leaves and they're all flattened like this. In the western red cedar, they're a little bit different than they're paired, but the pairs are different. And so the ones along the flat side are triangular, but the ones along the edge are folded. And so that's a subtle difference. If you have the cones, they're oval and very different than the yellow cedar and they open up into these sort of dried out sprays and release their seeds. Now these are often found in wet areas, kind of low-lying areas. Like you see picture over here on the right. Often the trunk is buttressed. It kind of flares out and you'll see some of these grooves at the base to help hold it up. Unlike the Alaska Nielo cedar, the aroma of this one, very pleasant, just that beautiful kind of frankincense tinted cedar smell to it, really quite lovely. It seemed like it might be useful to compare the western red cedar to its close cousin, the Arbor Vite. Maybe if you're not familiar with western red cedar, you've probably seen Arbor Vite, they're both in the same genus, uja or thuyah. How everyone can pronounce that one. Now I'm going to find them growing side-by-side in the wild. Arbor Vite is native to the eastern US, whereas western, obviously in the western US. Different looking trees, but similar enough, same sort of smell, similar cones, everything else. If you do catch them growing side-by-side in a landscape, one way to tell them apart, and here we get a good look at those paired leaves of the western red cedar, those triangular flat ones versus the folded triangular ones on the side, kind of like cupped hands in a way. These on the western red cedar have this very distinctive ridge along those leaves, whereas as mostly absent over here on the Arbor Vite. And other respects to their foliage is really very, very similar. That is it for this episode. Hope you enjoyed watching. Like to give it credit to the following sources, and say happy botanizing.