Species Brief
Callitropsis nootkatensis, yellow-cedar
Written
June, 2026
Contributors
Ilana L. Abrahamson - 1st Compiler, Leila Duchac - 1st Editor
Abrahamson, Ilana L., compiler. 2026. Species Brief: Callitropsis nootkatensis, yellow-cedar. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). Available: https://research.fs.usda.gov/feis/species-briefs/calnoo
DOI
10.2737/feis-species-brief-calnoo
Scientific Name
Callitropsis nootkatensis
Common Names
yellow-cedar
Alaska-cedar
Alaska cedar
Alaska cypress
Alaska yellow-cedar
Alaska yellow cedar
cypress
mountain cypress
Nootka cypress
Nootka false-cypress
Sitka cypress
yellow cedar
yellow cypress
FEIS Lifeform Type
Tree
Kingdom
Plantae
Class
Pinopsida (Conifer)
Order
Pinales
Family
Cupressaceae
Genus
Callitropsis
Nativity
Native
Invasiveness
Noninvasive
This Species Brief is a concise summary of the biological, ecological, and fire‑related characteristics of an individual species derived from a Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) Species Review. Table 1 is derived from a standardized template and highlights these characteristics.
| Attribute | Characteristic | Justification | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Biological characteristics | |||
| Life form | Tree | Yellow-cedar is a native, evergreen, long-lived tree, though it is typically dwarfed and shrublike in upper subalpine environments. | FEIS: Botanical Description [1] |
| Typical lifespan | 201+ years | On average, yellow-cedar lives for about 500 to 750 years. Extremely old trees often exceed 1,000 years, and the lifespan can exceed 1,500 years on some sites. | FEIS: Plant Growth and Mortality; Stand Structure [1] |
| Life cycle | Perennial | Yellow-cedar is a native, evergreen, long-lived tree. | FEIS: Botanical Description; Plant Growth and Mortality [1] |
| Drought tolerance | Low | Yellow-cedar requires a cool, humid climate and occurs most commonly where moisture is perennially available. Its photosynthetic rates are highest when water is not limited and decrease with moisture stress, and it is rare in droughty, deep pumice soils. | FEIS: Introduction; Site Characteristics; Landform, Topography, and Soils [1] |
| Rooting depth | Shallow: Varies* | On wet, saturated sites yellow-cedar roots are fine and shallow and concentrate near the soil surface. Limited information suggests that rooting depth is greater on relatively well-drained soils. | FEIS: Climate; Botanical Description [1] |
| Bark thickness at maturity | Thin | Bark is 1 to 2 cm thick. This thin bark provides little protection from heat injury to the cambium. | FEIS: Botanical Description; Fire Adaptations [1] |
| Sheds low branches | Sometimes* | Yellow-cedar is assigned a self-pruning value of 6 on a 1 to 10 scale in a fire-resistance analysis, indicating intermediate self-pruning. However, no narrative description of branch shedding is given. | FEIS: Fire Adaptations [1] |
| Reproduction and Regeneration | |||
| Adventitious buds | Yes, unspecified | Yellow-cedar reproduces vegetatively by layering. Its flexible stems and branches form roots easily when in contact with soil, and understory trees have shown adventitious rooting the year after partial burial by volcanic tephra. | FEIS: Vegetative Reproduction and Regeneration; Botanical Description [1] |
| Time to reproductive maturity | 6-10 years | Yellow-cedar begins to produce pollen and seed cones at an early age, often by 7 to 8 years old. | FEIS: Seed Production and Predation [1] |
| Soil seed bank longevity | Transient (<1 year); Short-term persistent (1-5 years) | No information is available on seed banking, although evidence suggests no more than a transient or short-term persistent seed bank, with ungerminated seeds that may germinate the next year if stratification requirements are met. | FEIS: Seed Banking; Germination [1] |
| Serotinous cones | No | Seed dispersal begins in the fall of the third growing season and continues to the following spring, mostly during dry weather, with no indication of heat- or fire-triggered cone opening. | FEIS: Seasonal Development [1] |
| Seed dispersal mechanism | Wind; Gravity | Yellow-cedar seeds are small with wings that are present but sometimes reduced, so seeds are dispersed by gravity and wind but do not go far. | FEIS: Seed Dispersal [1] |
| Seed dispersal distance | Short (mostly under parent plant) | No data are available on dispersal distances for yellow-cedar seeds. One study found seedlings an average of 4.65 m from population boundaries, and rarely farther than 11 m away, suggesting yellow-cedar seeds are probably not dispersed beyond the 120 m reported for related species. | FEIS: Seed Dispersal [1] |
| Optimal conditions for seedling establishment | Bare soil; Shade; Nurse plant/object | Germination rates are highest on bare mineral soil, however, interference from associated species limits establishment on bare microsites. Seedlings may establish under the forest canopy and survive in shade for decades, and most trees establish on old logs or stumps, with rotten downed wood favoring seedling survival. | FEIS: Germination; Seedling Establishment and Mortality; Elevation [1] |
| Successional Status | |||
| Shade tolerance | Shade tolerant | Yellow-cedar seedlings may establish under the forest canopy, grow very slowly, and remain in the understory for many years or decades, only reaching the canopy following the death of one or more surrounding trees. However, one study found the fastest-growing seedlings were in open microsites. | FEIS: Seedling Establishment and Mortality; Germination; Plant Growth and Mortality [1] |
| Successional status | Late; Mid | Yellow-cedar is a shade-tolerant, slow-growing, long-lived, late-successional species and a prominent component of older age-classes, but it also persists across middle stages in variable-density, often old-growth, mixed-conifer forests. Yellow-cedar is not as shade tolerant as its associates, and it is less tolerant in the northern parts of its range than in the southern parts. | FEIS: Successional Status; Stand Structure [1] |
| Fire | |||
| Primary fire response(s) or adaptation(s) | Fire Sensitive | Yellow-cedar has a low tolerance to fire and is generally not expected to survive even low-intensity fire because its thin bark provides little protection from heat injury to the cambium, and it does not regenerate vegetatively after top-kill or injury from fire. | FEIS: Fire Adaptations [1] |
| Germination is fire stimulated | Rarely/No | Information about yellow-cedar germination requirements is limited, but germination is not stimulated by fire. Stratification requirements are complex, and warm stratification followed by a long period of cold stratification can improve germination rates. | FEIS: Germination [1] |
| Flowering/fruiting is fire stimulated | Rarely/No | The source does not provide explicit information about fire-stimulated flowering or fruiting. Given the lack of fire adaptations and infrequent fire in plant communities where yellow-cedar occurs, it is unlikely that cone production is stimulated by fire. | FEIS [1] |
| Season when it is most sensitive to fire | Insufficient information | Yellow-cedar is sensitive to fire. Information about its immediate fire effects and response to fire is limited. No information was available regarding sensitivity to fire based on season. | FEIS [1] |
| Plant flammability | Medium | Fuels in most yellow-cedar communities are typically too wet to burn most of the time, owing to saturated soils, high precipitation, deep snowpack, and short growing seasons. Compared to other species, yellow-cedar had a low to moderate fire resistance score in a ranking of traits, including three relating to plant flammability. | FEIS: Fuel Characteristics; Fire Adaptations [1] |
| Early colonizer/recolonizer of burned or disturbed sites | Rarely/No; Sometimes* | Yellow-cedar seedling establishment is infrequent and sporadic in general, and subalpine communities are slow to recover after fire (e.g., few trees including a few yellow-cedars established after fires on subalpine sites in the Olympic Mountains even 88 years after fire). However, yellow-cedar has been reported to establish in early succession after fire. One study found that early-seral conifers including yellow-cedar established in burns in coastal subalpine forests, and another found that though mortality of mature trees was over 90% 1 year after fire in the Aldrich Mountains (inland mixed-conifer forest), 11 years later postfire regeneration was abundant. | FEIS: Fire Adaptations; Plant Response to Fire [1] |
| Effect of fire exclusion on population | Possible increase* | The effects of fire exclusion are probably minimal where yellow-cedar occurs, because these communities rarely burned historically. Nonetheless, late-successional stands may be more frequent and cover larger areas than before the era of fire exclusion. | FEIS: Fire Regimes [1] |
| Is this species typically managed with prescribed fire? | Rarely/No | The only prescribed-fire use noted is plantation site preparation, where growth and survival of planted yellow-cedars were better on burned than unburned silvicultural sites. Yellow-cedar is not otherwise managed with prescribed fire. | FEIS: Plant Response to Fire [1] |
| Predominant historical fire frequencies of ecosystem where it most commonly occurs | Infrequent | In the wet forests where yellow-cedar is most common, fire intervals are very long: about 1,000 years in swamp forests, around 2,000 years in coastal rainforests, and over 1,500 years in subalpine mountain hemlock forests. The one exception is the relict dry Aldrich Mountains grove, with estimated intervals of 10 to 21 years. Within that grove, yellow-cedar occurs in moist, shady microsites that may experience fire less frequently than the surrounding area. | FEIS: Fire Regimes; Plant Communities [1] |
| Predominant historical fire severity where it most commonly occurs | Replacement | When rare fire occurs in the coastal rainforest it is generally stand-replacing, and most historical fires in subalpine forests were high-severity, stand-replacement events. Low-severity fire applies only to the relict Aldrich Mountains stand, where low-severity fires burned the surrounding forest frequently, but may not have always extended into the moist, streamside microsites where yellow-cedar occurs. | FEIS: Fire Regimes; Plant Response to Fire; Plant Communities [1] |
| Predominant historical fire regime group where it most commonly occurs | 5 | Yellow-cedar is most common in wet forests—swamps, coastal rainforests, and subalpine mountain hemlock—where fire intervals run from roughly 1,000 to over 2,000 years and rare fire is stand-replacing. The LANDFIRE Biophysical Settings for these systems indicate fire regime group 5. | FEIS: Fire Regimes; FEIS: 2020 LANDFIRE Biophysical Settings [1] |
| Alters historical fuel characteristics of ecosystems where it occurs | Rarely/No | Yellow-cedar is native within its historical range and is not described as altering fuels. Fuels in most yellow-cedar communities are typically too wet to burn most of the time. | FEIS: Fuel Characteristics [1] |
| Biophysical Setting | Mean Fire Interval (years) | Fire Severity Percent (%) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Code | Fire Regime Group | Low | Mixed | Replacement | All | Low | Mixed | Replacement |
| Series 10380 - North Pacific Maritime Mesic Subalpine Parkland | ||||||||
| 10380_1_7 | V-B | 5183 | 5183 | 0 | 0 | 100 | ||
| Series 10411 - North Pacific Mountain Hemlock Forest - Wet | ||||||||
| 10411_1_7 | V-B | 5135 | 10910 | 3461 | 0 | 68 | 32 | |
| Series 10412 - North Pacific Mountain Hemlock Forest - Xeric | ||||||||
| 10412_1_7 | III-B | 1001 | 615 | 294 | 166 | 17 | 27 | 56 |
| Series 10420 - North Pacific Mesic Western Hemlock-Silver Fir Forest | ||||||||
| 10420_1_7 | V-B | 1742 | 3606 | 1172 | 0 | 67 | 33 | |
| Series 10830 - North Pacific Avalanche Chute Shrubland | ||||||||
| 10830_1 | V-B | 998 | 998 | 0 | 0 | 100 | ||
| Series 16810 - Alaskan Pacific Poorly Drained Conifer Woodland | ||||||||
| 16810_73_75_76_77_78 | ||||||||
| Series 16570 - Alaskan Pacific Maritime Mountain Hemlock-Shore Pine Peatland | ||||||||
| 16570_75_77_78 | ||||||||
| Summary | ||||||||
| Minimum | 1001 | 615 | 294 | 166 | 0 | 0 | 32 | |
| Maximum | 1001 | 5135 | 10910 | 5183 | 17 | 68 | 100 | |
| Mean | 1001 | 2497 | 4198 | 2196 | 3 | 32 | 64 | |
| Median | 1001 | 1742 | 3606 | 1172 | 0 | 27 | 56 | |
| Percentage of fires in 3 fire severity classes, derived from LANDFIRE succession modeling. Replacement-severity fires cause >75% kill or top-kill of the upper canopy layer; mixed-severity fires cause 26%-75%; low-severity fires cause <26%. | ||||||||
| LANDFIRE. 2020. Biophysical settings models and descriptions, [Online]. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service; U.S. Department of the Interior; U.S. Geological Survey; Arlington, VA: The Nature Conservancy, (Producers). Available: https://www.landfirereview.org/search.php [96496] | ||||||||
- Zouhar, Kristin. 2025. Callitropsis nootkatensis, yellow-cedar. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). Available: https://research.fs.usda.gov/feis/species-reviews/calnoo
Last updated August 20, 2026