Are Cedar Trees Native to Texas Hill Country Ranches?

The ashe juniper tree. Oh how I hate ash juniper. I’ve cleaned it all my life, knowing full well its ability to prick you with its needles, sicken you with its pollen, grow anywhere, even from rock, stay low to dull your chainsaw blade on limestone, and burn so hot and bursting so fast that it can take the hair off your arm if you get too close. However, reacting to a recent study touting the benefits of cedar thickets, my research showed me that I knew little about my enemy of all these years. Where did the cedar come from, how did it become what it is today, and how do we justify getting rid of it:

Is cedar native? The common consensus seems to be that cedar is NOT native and was spread by cattle drives from Mexico. However, cattle do not eat the berries and the berries cannot stick to their hair because they are round and soft. Nullifying the notion that cedar is not native are settler manuscripts, farms dating back hundreds of years built with cedar, and a 1995 study in the September 1995 issue of Quaternary Research, in which researchers Stephen Hall and Salvatore Valastro found juniper pollen dating to the Ice Age in Friesenhan’s Cave in northwestern Bexar County.

Has it always been this thick and prominent? Based on the accounts of many recorded settlers, we can overturn the notion that many have that the Hill Country was once just one big prairie, however it was not what it is today. Settlers describe Hill Country cedar thickets, open areas, hardwoods, etc. However, while the Indians allowed the wildfires to burn, the settlers did not, which has allowed (along with the cedar’s amazing ability to survive the driest conditions) the cedar to spread and thrive like never before. According to LBJ historian Robert Caro in Path to Power, “When white men first came to the Hill Country, there was little cedar there. Twenty years later, cedar covered entire areas of the country as far as the eye could see; for By 1904, a single cedar brake reaching northwest Austin covered 500 square miles and was growing, faster and faster, each year.”

Can we vilify the cedar as the culprit of the water? The common notion that cedar absorbs about 30 gallons of water a day, more than any hardwood, may be overstepped according to new research. A 2008 A&M study concluded that live oaks absorb more water than cedar and found that cedar thickets are beneficial to the environment for CO2 storage; specifically, that cedar brakes provide a “large gain in carbon storage for a relatively small increase in water use.” Obviously, cedar thickets absorb a lot of water. A&M’s own 1997 study with the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board agrees, finding that “increases in juniper can have a large impact on grassland hydrology.”

So, truth be told, cedar is native, more prominent than ever, and while it definitely affects water availability, disbelief that it removes 30 gallons of water a day may be warranted. Make no mistake, this is not the time to make friends and grow cedar; however, it seems our old foe is just that and may not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future.