How to Identify Eastern Red Cedar

Start with color and the heartwood/sapwood boundary. Few woods show the contrast as clearly as Eastern Red Cedar: a warm reddish, reddish-brown, or purple-tinged heartwood set against a crisp, narrow band of pale creamy-yellow to white sapwood, just as on this sample. The heartwood is often streaked and marbled in tone rather than uniform, and small tight knots are common because the tree is small and branchy. Fresh surfaces are vivid; expect the color to warm and dull toward amber-brown with age.

Use your nose — it is the single most reliable test. Eastern Red Cedar has a strong, sweet, spicy aroma that is instantly recognizable and grows stronger with a fresh cut or light sanding. That scent, combined with the red-and-cream color, separates it from almost everything else at a glance. If a piece looks like cedar but has little or no smell, be suspicious.

Check weight and grain. The wood is light in the hand, with a fine, even texture and low luster, and the growth rings are tight and closely spaced. On the end grain it is a soft, non-porous conifer — no vessel pores like a hardwood — with narrow, gradual growth rings and no bands of large open pores. It presses fairly firmly for a softwood but still marks under a thumbnail more readily than oak or maple.

The common look-alikes are Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata), aromatic Spanish cedar (Cedrela odorata), and redwood. Western Red Cedar is a duller pinkish- to chocolate-brown, comes in far wider clear boards, has a sharper, more sour-pungent scent, and lacks the vivid purple-red streaking and tight knots. Spanish cedar (a true mahogany relative, not a conifer) is more uniform tan-to-reddish-brown, more open and coarse in texture, and has a milder, more peppery smell. Redwood is redder-brown and straight-grained but larger, cleaner, and only faintly aromatic. When the board is small, knotty, sharply two-toned red-and-cream, and strongly sweet-smelling, it is almost certainly Eastern Red Cedar.