81. Western Hemlock

Location: East of Benson Hall, near the South east corner.

Historical Background: Western hemlock is the Washington state tree and is the most common tree in Alaska and on the B.C. coast. Coastal Native Tribes use this tree for food, medicine, and for dye. The Quileute use the tannins to dye leather. The Kwakwaka’wakw steep the bark in urine to produce a black dye. Hemlock boughs were also incorporated into their clothing such as skirts and headdresses. The Nuxalk and Chehalis also create a dye with the bark to turn fishnets brown so they are invisible in the water. 

Native

Native Range: Alaska to the Central Sierra of California and to northern California along the Pacific Coast

Identifying Features: The sweeping delicate boughs and drooping foliage of this tree are truly beautiful to see. The needles are short and flat, often variable in length and irregularly spaced (an adaptation which likely aids in acquiring light in thick forests) leading to an impression of feathery flat sprays along the branch. The color is a soft yellow green to blue green on the tops of needles, with two lines of stomatal bands beneath turning the undersides a whitish green color. The tree grows large, up to about 200” (60m) in height and can achieve widths of as much as 30”! Bark is a rough scaly or furrowed gray to reddish brown.

Identifying Features In Depth:

1. Form: Tall and straight, high apical control and cylindrical shape with a drooping leader and graceful branches which sweep downwards. Grows to a height of 200” (60m) and can achieve widths of up to 30” at the base.

2. Leaves: Needles are blunt and flat, short and of unequal length 5-20mm long. They are usually yellowish green in color and grow along the branch into feathery sprays which tumble like cascades down the sweeping boughs. The bottom of the needles are whitish with 2 stomatal bands. Needles grow out of a short petiole which leaves a long scar when ripped away.

3. Bark: Bark is a gray to reddish brown in color and becomes thick and furrowed on older trees, scaly on younger individuals. Twigs are slender and bear the peg like bases left behind when needles fall.

4. Reproductive Bodies: Pollen cones are prolific and small. Seed cones are likewise extremely numerous upon the tree, small (up to an inch or 2cm in length) and slightly oblong to rounded, purple green when rounded and light brown when mature, often present in large numbers around the base of the tree. Cones have rounded scales, as opposed to the rosebud shape of the Western redcedar whose cones are a similar size but different shape.