Back when Kelly Roberts was a kid during the 1970s, her family would scout their northeastern Oklahoma pasture every year, looking for the perfect eastern redcedar for their Christmas tree.
“I remember traipsing across the pasture and there were very few,” Roberts said. “So we would have to walk a while before we would find one and then rule it out or rule it in.”
Fifty years later, it’s a different story.
Eastern redcedars have crept across the Great Plains, carpeting what used to be grassland from the Texas, up through Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska.
In some…
Eastern redcedar considered nuisance
The holiday season is evergreen trees’ time to shine. But one tree — the eastern redcedar — has come to be considered a nuisance as it spreads across the Great Plains.
