The Eastern or Canadian Hemlock is a beautiful conifer in the Pine Family. It grows in forests and in cool, moist locations on and around slopes, hills, ravines, hollows from Nova Scotia and southeast Canada, New England down the Appalachian Region into northern Georgia and a little into Alabama, also in northern Michigan & Wisconsin. It has tiny, round-tipped, flat , soft needles directly attached to the twigs. It bears tiny soft yellowish male cones and pale green female cones in late May and early June. The female cones persist and become the tiny brown cones about 3/4 inch long that last into winter. It grows about 1 to 1.5 feet/year and lives over 300 to 400 years. It has shallow, fibrous, wide-spreading roots and it is somewhat difficult to transplant, but nurseries do that B&B in early spring. Eastern hemlock is sensitive to heat, drought, strong dry winds, heavy or compacted soils, and salt. Many nurseries grow some and it is sort of expensive, but it is a high quality plant. It is common in its native range in the wild and in landscapes. It is occasionally planted in the Chicago area where it is successful in good quality, moist soils and with some shelter from dry, hot, windy conditions. A new insect pest from east Asia, the Asian Hemlock Adelgid or Wooly Aphid, is damaging and killing lots of Hemlocks in areas of the Appalachians. In southeast Pennsylvania so far I have not seen lots of death of trees, maybe because they are not so thickly massed together as in the Appalachians. I expect an eventual victory for the tree in the future.

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Pennsylvania's state tree.

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