Looking through the back issues so I’m not repeating myself, I can only find one short mention of Red Cedar. Given its role in the European colonisation of the east coast it’s a fairly major miss by me, so here goes.
My first introduction to Red Cedar was around half a century ago. My great Uncle Blue (a red head so naturally enough everyone called him “Blue”) was a retired French Polisher who kept himself busy during his retirement by making bits and pieces of furniture from Red Cedar and polishing them to a lustrous mirror finish.
Not having any kids of his own he’d load up his mustard yellow Leyland Marina with bits of furniture and other assorted goodies (a nephew of his owned a Darrel Lea shop in Nowra so Uncle Blue would often pick up interesting bits from there, including the rubber chocolates they had in the display windows) and head up from Nowra to my Nanna (his sister) and Pop’s place at Port Stephens, distributing goodies to the nieces and nephews along the way. He could have given Santa lessons in packing.
While the rubber and real chocolates may have been lost in time, the furniture remains, just needing the occasional dusting to keep it shiny, a testament to his craftsmanship and to the qualities that made the Red Cedar famous.
A decade after the arrival of the First Fleet, Red Cedar timber was one of the colony’s top exports, abundant, easy to harvest (particularly compared to the Eucalypts), lightweight and easy to work. Cedar cutting gangs generally preceded the farmers with cedar logs being floated downstream to be hauled out for milling.
In the Hunter region Red Cedar was prolific with good patches in rainforests right up the valley, with it being harvested from the flats around Morpeth and Singleton as well as up the Myall and Williams Rivers.
There are still some remote patches which escaped the loggers’ axes in parts of the Wattagans, Barrington Tops and Liverpool Range, including probably the most inland patch about 20 kilometres West, North-west of where I’m currently sitting. There is a useful map available if you search in the Australian Virtual Herbarium for a map of Red Cedar specimens collected in the Hunter Region.
The Red Cedar (Toona ciliata) is a medium to large deciduous rainforest tree with brown to grey scaly bark, leaves are (usually) paripinnate 15-45 cm long with 8 to 20 ovate to falcate leaflets, 4-15cm long, 1.5-5cm wide, margins are entire though often toothed when young. The easy identification feature are the small hairy tufts (domatia) on the underside of the leaflets, the reddish flush of new growth in spring also makes them identifiable from a distance.
Image from: https://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=toona~ciliata
They can be easily grown from seed however if planted in the open are vulnerable to Cedar Tip Moth which prevents them from developing good trunks, planted in the shade in moist soil they should develop into a good specimen.