The Rope Tree: Western Redcedar has a unique survival trick, well known by Indigenous Tribes, that makes it near immortal, and its death from Climate Change all the more terrifying
When I first read about how Pacific Coastal Tribes made use of the Western Redcedar’s bark for clothing, it immediately conjured up the image of them walking around in an armoured suit made out of wood. Using wood for clothing seemed incredibly uncomfortable -think of the splinters!- but at the time I just let the irrationality of it go. Hey, it was hundreds of years ago right? Maybe it was the best option they had. Every culture did nonsensical things back then. Wood clothing was hardly the worst idea.
If I would have read a bit deeper into it, I would have realized how wrong I was about this “wood armour” idea. Unfortunately it’s still pretty easy to overlook the true insight and brilliance behind pieces of Indigenous Knowledge. Most sources that collect this knowledge about plants seem to focus more on the quantity rather then the quality of the facts they give. They’ll go through a long list of tools and medicine that tribes used a plant for, without giving you any real understanding of why or how.
Context is not easy to find these days, but it’s not impossible, and thankful there’s a large group of people out there now revealing and explaining this kind of knowledge.
A few nights ago, during some mindless internet browsing, I came across this video from Trees Forever. Here’s a GIF of the part of the video that blew my mind and gave me one of those “Whoa” moments when a dozen half-baked thoughts in your head suddenly come together to produce a glorious insight.
Ok so, first of all apparently if the perfect tall and straight Redcedar is found it’s possible to get a strip of bark like this 10 meters long! The length of a telephone pole! Wow.
Secondly, no way you can harvest bark like this for any other tree but a Cedar tree! The strips of bark would break off in much shorter pieces. The pholem, the inner bark of the tree, (which is the true goal of the harvesting here) is the part of the tree that distributes the sugars throughout the tree. While it does generally run straight up the side of the tree, it also curves as it removes and delivers sugars to different branches.
Consider this GIF of the bark being removed for Cork from an Oak tree. Look at the uneven, wide pieces of bark compared to the long, thin strip of Cedar we saw in the GIF above (also how much harder it is to remove):
Ok sure, this is kinda interesting, but why did this strip of Redcedar bark blow my mind?
Well seeing this long strip of bark pulled from a Redcedar immediately reminded me of something I had read about the Eastern White Cedar, a very closely related (although much smaller) species that lives on the north-eastern side of North America.
Warped and tiny White Cedar trees, some about the same size you are, have managed to escape the axe of industrialization and the mass deforestation of Eastern North America. Practically all the old-growth forests are gone, but these tiny White Cedars have survived by hanging off huge cliffs in areas like the Niagara Escarpment (The cliffs that result in Niagara Falls). Some of these trees are now thousands of years old and make up some of the oldest trees in the world.
How are these small White Cedars able to survive to such ancient ages? In their book, The Last Stand -A Journey Through the Ancient Cliff-Faced Forests of the Niagara Escarpment ( A must read for anyone who lives in Eastern North America and even has a passing interest in trees), Peter E. Kelly and Douglas W. Larson (who first discovered the ages of these ancient trees and has directed/assisted with most of the research on them) put forward an answer that led to my “Aha!” moment.
They reveal (and give evidence for it in scientific papers) that the White Cedar, unlike almost all other trees, has direct connection between each root and each branch. For most trees, the roots collectively provide water for all the branches, but in White Cedar specific roots provide water for specific branches. Thus, the White Cedar can survive so long by allowing almost all of its branches and roots to die (which give it that warped appearance), and just keeping the functioning ones (e.g. the roots that have access to a water source) alive.
So these White Cedars are essentially ‘mostly-dead’ except for these ‘living bark-strips’ where the tree continues to grow.
So when I saw that long strip of Western Redcedar bark being harvested, it clicked for me that Redcedars have the same ability. They have specific roots that connect directly to specific branches. Redcedar grows much taller then White Cedar, so harvesting these bark strips gives you these long fibers (the tubes that the sugars and water flow through) which Coastal tribes could then use for clothing, mats, baskets, next to anything that needed to be made out of very flexible put durable material. They were rope trees, providing an incredibly important form of technology to humankind that rivals the wheel. The value of such technology is hard to overstate. No wonder Western Redcedar was widely referred to as the Tree of Life by Coastal Tribes.
This specific, 1:1 root-branch connection, contributes to what makes the Western Redcedar such a long lived and massive tree. It’s why so often the oldest, tallest trees have a dead top from lightning strikes, but can continue to grow. As long as one root can find some water, as long as one branch can find some sun, you can’t kill a Redcedar Tree.
That is, of course, unless you start mass cutting them down and begin releasing Carbon Dioxide at such a rate that temperatures soar and drought becomes so common that not even a single Redcedar root can find water. This, unfortunately, is the spot we are are now in.
Ancient Western Redcedars, some of the last remaining old-growth forests in Canada, continue to be cut down. Also across the Pacific Coast Redcedars are dying and scientists are still unclear what is causing it. The leading theory is a combination of drought and high temperatures but debate is still ongoing. Either way, it’s terrifying. If a tree as tough and un-killable as the Western Redcedar is now at risk, what chance do the other trees have? What chance do we have?
One of the most fascinating things about how Coastal Tribes harvested the “rope” from the Redcedar is that they didn’t kill the tree to do it. They would only take the bark from the sunny side as well, so the tree had access to the energy it needed to grow that bark back. These trees have been called Culturally Modified Trees and these grown-over scars from harvesting are often found on logged Cedar trunks. It’s an incredible example of sustainable forestry. Use the tree without killing the tree. It’s why we still have these beautiful old growth forests on the West Coast.
It’s known that Western Redcedar will grow small, warped, and wizened just like the White Cedar when they are found high on mountains or cliffs. In places where they can’t be touched by human hands. How long before these hidden, tiny, ancient trees, just the like the White Cedar on the Niagara Escarpment, are all that remain?
