Say “cedar” to ten gardeners and you may be picturing ten different trees. The word gets stamped on a handful of evergreens from three separate plant families, and only one of those groups is botanically a cedar at all. The eastern red cedar growing wild along the fence line is a juniper. The fragrant western red cedar milled into decking is an arborvitae. The towering blue specimen on the old estate is the real thing — a member of the genus Cedrus. Sorting out which “cedar” you actually have changes everything that follows: how big it gets, where it grows, how you care for it, and whether it belongs in your yard at all.
This guide untangles the naming mess first, then walks through identifying each group, growing both the true cedars and the common landscape impostors, the prized aromatic wood they share, and how to pick the right one for your own ground.
Why so many unrelated trees are all called “cedar”
There is exactly one genus of true cedar — Cedrus — and it holds only four species: deodar (Cedrus deodara) from the western Himalayas, Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) from the mountains of North Africa, cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) from the eastern Mediterranean, and the rare Cyprian cedar (Cedrus brevifolia). All four sit in the pine family, Pinaceae. That is the entire roster of botanical cedars on Earth.
Everything else carrying the name is a “false cedar.” When European settlers reached North America and the colonial trading routes opened, they met unfamiliar evergreens whose aromatic, rot-resistant heartwood smelled like the Mediterranean cedars they knew from scripture and shipbuilding. So they called them cedars too. The name stuck even though the trees are only distant cousins. Most false cedars belong to the cypress family, Cupressaceae, spread across the genera Juniperus, Thuja, Chamaecyparis, Calocedrus, and Cryptomeria — and a few “cedars” elsewhere, like Spanish cedar (Cedrela odorata), aren’t even conifers.
The practical upshot: a common name like “red cedar” tells you almost nothing reliable. The botanical name does. When you want to know what a tree will actually do, reach for the Latin.
The four true cedars at a glance
True cedars are Mediterranean and Himalayan mountain trees — long-lived, often massive, and grown in temperate gardens as living architecture. They share a pyramidal youth that broadens into spreading, layered, sometimes flat-topped maturity. Lebanon cedars have lived past 1,000 years, and some Lebanese specimens are estimated at over 1,500.
- Deodar cedar (Cedrus deodara) — the fast grower and the most forgiving of warm climates. Soft, slightly drooping branch tips and a graceful weeping leader give it the most relaxed silhouette of the group. Reaches 40 to 50 ft in gardens (far taller in the wild), hardy in roughly USDA zones 7 to 9. Its name means “wood of the gods.”
- Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) — the cold-hardy one, good to about zone 6, with stiffer, more upright architecture and short blue-green needles often dusted with a silvery bloom. The widely sold Blue Atlas cedar (‘Glauca’) and the dramatic weeping form (‘Glauca Pendula’) are this species.
- Cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) — the iconic broad-spreading, flat-topped giant, sometimes splitting into several trunks with age. Cold-hardier than its warm origin suggests (zones 6 to 9), but needs serious room — this is an estate tree, not a small-yard tree.
- Cyprian cedar (Cedrus brevifolia) — the rarest and smallest, with short needles and horizontal branching, essentially a compact Lebanon cedar for gardens that can’t host the full-sized version.
Botanists treat these as four species, though some lump Atlas, Cyprian, and Lebanon as varieties of one. For the gardener the lines that matter are climate and size, not the taxonomy debate.
The common “cedars” that aren’t cedars
These are the trees most people actually plant and meet, because they’re native, cheap, and sold everywhere.
Eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) is a juniper — the most widely distributed conifer in eastern North America. It’s a tough, columnar-to-rounded native that volunteers along fencerows and abandoned fields, hardy through an enormous range (zones 2 to 9), and famous for the aromatic, rot-resistant wood that made colonial fence posts, chests, and pencils. Its blue, berry-like cones feed more than 50 bird species, including the cedar waxwing named for it.
Northern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) is an arborvitae, the soft-foliaged evergreen sold by the truckload for privacy hedges. Flat, fan-like sprays of scale leaves, tidy pyramidal form, cold-hardy to zone 3, and easy to shear — this is the workhorse screen plant of cold-climate yards.
Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) is also an arborvitae, but a colossal one — to 200 ft and beyond in the Pacific Northwest. Its exceptionally durable, decay-resistant timber is the cedar of decking, siding, shingles, and fence boards. The popular hybrid ‘Green Giant’ and dwarf cultivars bring it into ordinary landscapes as fast screens.
Several more wear the name: incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens), Alaska or Nootka cedar (Cupressus/Callitropsis nootkatensis), Atlantic white cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides), Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica), and Spanish cedar (Cedrela odorata). All are false cedars, and all reinforce the same lesson — the label “cedar” is a marketing and folk name, not a botanical one.
How to tell a true cedar from a false one in 30 seconds
You don’t need a key. Three features sort the groups fast.
Look at the leaves. True cedars (Cedrus) carry short stiff needles in dense little clusters or rosettes on woody pegs along the branch, much like a larch but evergreen. The false cedars in the cypress family — junipers, arborvitae, incense cedar — wear soft, flat, scale-like foliage pressed against the twig in feathery sprays. Needle tufts on pegs means true cedar; feathery scales means false.
Look at the cones. True cedars bear chunky, upright, barrel-shaped cones that sit on top of the branches like little kegs and disintegrate in place when ripe, scattering their seeds. You almost never find a whole Cedrus cone on the ground intact. Junipers carry small, soft, blue, berry-like cones (the “juniper berries” of gin fame). Arborvitae carry tiny, dry, papery brown cones the size of a fingernail.
Look at the overall form and size. A true cedar in its prime is an enormous, layered, often flat-topped specimen with horizontal tiers — unmistakably grand. The everyday “cedars” are usually narrow columns and pyramids (junipers, arborvitae hedges) or, in the case of western red cedar, a tall conical timber tree.
A quick distinction between the two false-cedar camps people confuse most: juniper “cedars” tend toward needle-like or mixed foliage and produce berry-cones, while arborvitae “cedars” produce flat scale-leaf sprays and dry papery cones. Eastern red cedar is the juniper; the white and western red cedars are the arborvitae.
Growing and caring for true cedars
Treat true cedars as the mountain trees they are: they want sun, sharp drainage, and room.
Site and soil. Full sun — five to six hours minimum — and well-drained ground are non-negotiable. Cedars tolerate poor, rocky, even somewhat dry soils once established, but standing water and heavy wet clay will rot the roots. Pick the species to your zone before anything else: deodar for warmer regions (zones 7 to 9), Atlas for colder ones (down to zone 6), Lebanon where you have both the cold-hardiness and the acreage.
Planting. Plant in early fall, roughly six to eight weeks before hard frost, so roots establish in cool, moist soil; spring planting after the ground thaws works better in the coldest zones. Dig the hole twice as wide as the root ball but no deeper, set the tree at the same depth it grew in the container, backfill with the native soil, water deeply, and finish with a 3 to 4 inch ring of mulch held back from the trunk.
Watering. Water deeply and regularly through the first two growing seasons while the deep root system develops — established cedars send roots several feet down and become genuinely drought-tolerant afterward. The most common way to kill a young cedar is overwatering, not underwatering.
Feeding and pruning. These are low-input trees. A light feeding of slow-release evergreen fertilizer in spring is plenty; skip high-nitrogen products, which push soft, floppy growth. Pruning is minimal — remove dead, damaged, or crossing branches and otherwise let the natural layered form develop. Late winter is the time for any shaping. Give the tree its mature spread at planting; cedars resent being hacked back to fit a space that was always too small.
Space. This is the single biggest mistake. A deodar or Lebanon cedar that looks tidy in a nursery pot becomes a 40 to 70 ft tree with a 20 to 30 ft spread, and some push past 100 ft. Don’t plant one against the house, under power lines, or near the drive.
Growing the landscape “cedars”: junipers and arborvitae
The false cedars are, conveniently, even easier than the real ones — which is exactly why they fill so many yards.
Eastern red cedar (juniper) thrives where fussier plants give up. It shrugs off drought, heat, cold, wind, salt spray, alkaline soil, and poor rocky ground, asking only for sun and decent drainage; it tolerates everything but deep shade. Plant it for windbreaks, wildlife screens, erosion control on slopes, and xeriscapes. Two cautions: it’s an alternate host for cedar-apple rust, so keep it well away — ideally several hundred feet — from apples, crabapples, pears, and quince, and watch for bagworms, which you pick off and destroy before eggs hatch. Narrow cultivars like ‘Taylor’, ‘Blue Arrow’, and ‘Emerald Sentinel’ give you the toughness in a tidy columnar shape.
Arborvitae “cedars” (Thuja) are the privacy plants. Northern white cedar and the giant western red cedar both want full sun to part shade and moist but well-drained soil; both shear cleanly, hold their shape with little fuss, and grow into dense living walls. Water new plants regularly until established, then keep an eye on summer drought, since arborvitae are thirstier than junipers and will brown out at the base if they dry hard. For a fast tall screen, ‘Green Giant’ (a western red cedar hybrid) is the standard; for cold-climate hedging, northern white cedar cultivars are the classic choice. The main pests are bagworms and, where deer are heavy, browsing — arborvitae is candy to deer, whereas the aromatic junipers are largely left alone.
The aromatic, rot-resistant wood that ties them all together
Different families, one shared trait — and it’s the reason all these trees got the same name. The heartwood of both true cedars and the cypress-family false cedars is loaded with aromatic oils that make it naturally resistant to decay and repellent to insects.
That property built empires of use. Cedar of Lebanon timber raised temples and ships for millennia. Western red cedar’s durable, straight-grained wood is the modern standard for shingles, siding, decking, fences, and outdoor furniture precisely because it weathers without rotting. Eastern red cedar’s fragrant heartwood lined the cedar chests and closets that protect wool from moths, and it was the original pencil wood. Deodar timber is prized in construction for its strength and grain.
The same volatile oils that repel moths can repel — or harm — small animals, so cedar shavings, while popular for kennel bedding to control odor and fleas, should be used cautiously around small reptiles, amphibians, and pocket pets, which can be sickened by the fumes. And the aromatic foliage is why deer skip the junipers: the oils that preserve the wood also make the tree taste terrible.
Choosing the right “cedar” for your yard
Start with the job, not the name on the tag.
- For a fast privacy hedge or screen: arborvitae. Northern white cedar in cold climates, ‘Green Giant’ western red cedar where you want height fast and have the room.
- For a tough windbreak, wildlife planting, or xeriscape on poor soil: eastern red cedar (juniper). Nearly bulletproof — just keep it away from apple and pear trees.
- For a single grand specimen tree with character and a long life: a true cedar. Deodar for warm regions and a soft weeping look, Atlas (especially Blue Atlas) for cold climates and silver-blue color and sculptural form, cedar of Lebanon if you have estate-sized space.
- For a small yard: a dwarf or columnar cultivar — Cyprian cedar, a compact arborvitae, or a narrow juniper selection — never a full-sized true cedar or western red cedar squeezed into a tight bed.
Then match three things to your site: the hardiness zone (this rules species in or out before anything else), the mature size against your actual available space, and the drainage. Get those right and almost any “cedar,” true or false, will reward you with decades of evergreen structure, fragrance, and year-round screening — and you’ll finally know exactly which tree you’re growing.