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Index of Subjects When I first moved from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick some years ago as a forestry student, I was struck by the abundance of cedar, a tree species I had only seen as an ornamental. I have since learned that white cedar prefers calcareous soils, which are lacking in much of Nova Scotia, particularly on the Atlantic slope. That said, one can find cedar in New Brunswick on acidic, granite-derived soils, although it doesn't reach nearly the same stature or abundance as on the richer soils. It is better developed in wet areas where the groundwater is influenced by calcareous subsoil, and is also common on dry calcareous ledges, such as on the limestone ledges near Saint John. Cedar swamps are among my favourite sites to poke around in - great places to see orchids and rare lichens. In NS their role is partly taken over by red maple swamps, which have their own intrinsic values, although after living in NB for so long it now feels like something is missing when I visit a red maple swamp in NS (I could do without the ticks too....). With respect to shingles: a few years back I asked my grandfather, who had been a lumberman and sawyer all his life in the Digby County area, what he sawed for shingles given that there was no cedar to speak of. He told me that when they were logging swampy areas they kept an eye out for spruce with dark, pitch-filled heartwood. Shingles sawn from such logs will last for decades, as those of you who have found fresh, solid pitchwood in an ancient, punky spruce stump can attest. While probably never abundant in NS, some of the old references seem to indicate that it may have been a bit more common in the past. I also seem to recall seeing lumber production statistics from the early 1900s that indicated limited but regular production of cedar lumber in the province back then. Dwayne Sabine Fredericton, New Brunswick
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