A female Eastern red cedar, exploding in fruit, stands at the harbor end of Commercial Street in Wellfleet. The species is dioecious, meaning it comes in two different sexes, so a nearby male was needed for pollination. (Several sheepish bachelors can indeed be seen loitering by the pier.) The berry-like fruits aren’t actually berries but cones — it’s a conifer, after all — and the red cedar itself isn’t actually a cedar, but a juniper: Juniperus virginiana. Try crushing a cone in your fingers to reveal a whiff of gin before cedar waxwings alight on their namesake tree to devour the rest. —Joe Beuerlein
