

Labeling pictures from Cedar City is difficult as there are no cedars near Cedar City. The town and things around the town were named for the Juniper trees that grow in abundance around the town. Most of the stories on the name of Cedar City hold that the early pioneers were too stupid to properly identify plants. Personally, I think the reason for the names is more complex. The Mormon Pioneers were out to build a new Zion and loved naming the features in the area with a biblical motif. Since there has always been a great deal of latitude in common plant names, the pioneers took to calling the local Junipers "cedar" with the hope that the name would stick. The name "cedar" probably would have stuck except the taxonomists developing the scientific classification system chose to distinguish between the Pinaceae (pine) and Cupressaceae (cypress) families. The scientific naming system is having the same crisis with plant classifications with the current push to classify plants with phylogentic system.


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