By Terry Rector

The couple of times I have been to Blue Mountain, Mississippi, were for church volunteer projects up there.

I added Blue Mountain to D’Lo and Soso as towns in the state with unusual names that I have visited. Hot Coffee, Mississippi, is still on the “to do” list.

The story goes Blue Mountain got its name from a former Confederate general looking for a spot on which to build a private women’s college.  He saw the high hill in Tippah County covered in cedar trees as blue instead of green and thus created Blue Mountain Female Institute.  The town that grew around the school took on the Blue Mountain name.

The facts make for quaint history, but it’s a hill, not a mountain. There are no mountains in Mississippi. And our native cedar trees are green, not blue.

It must have been a cloudy day.

And to add to the errors, our cedars are not even cedars. We go with the common name of Eastern Red Cedar, but they actually are junipers, Juniperus virginiana to be precise.

There are indeed true cedar trees in other parts of the world, but the only true cedars in Mississippi are Asian imports grown as landscape trees.  But I’ll keep calling ours “cedar” like everyone else does.

As the oaks, gums and other trees start getting dull this time of year, the evergreen Eastern red cedars stand out along road sides and fence rows and at the open edges of forests.

The species is widespread because it will grow in most every soil type we have as long as it doesn’t stay wet. Dirt just doesn’t get so poor a cedar won’t grow.

Pasture and roadside fences host so many cedars because of birds. The trees produce lots of tasty berries with seeds and birds are among numerous wildlife species that gobble them up. And where do birds rest? On the top fence wire, of course. The cedar seeds pass through the birds’ digestive tracts and drop to the ground in a glob of natural fertilizer.

The fences protect young cedars from mowing machines, resulting in lots of cedars along fences.

The same thing happens at the edges of woods thanks to birds in the trees. But cedars reach out for sun along the edge and won’t grow in the interior shade of forests.

Actually, only half of red cedar trees produce seeds because the trees are dioecious, meaning each tree is either male or female. And the trees produce an oil that accounts for the insect repelling trait of cedar chests. Native Americans and other indigenous people used the oil for medicinal purposes and made dye using cedar bark.

Superstition is responsible for the nickname of “graveyard tree” for red cedar. Allegedly, if you plant a cedar, when it gets tall enough to shade a grave, it’s time for you to die. Oops!  I planted some about 15 years ago to grow my own Christmas trees. The ones remaining are way on up there.

 

Terry Rector is spokesman for the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District.