This article is about the Green Giant Arborvitae.
The original Green Giant got its name not from ancient lore, but from unusually extra large, hence "giant," green peas. These "Green Giant Peas" were introduced by the Minnesota Valley Canning Company in 1925, in contrast to their previously marketed LeSueur baby peas, early-picked in June. Founded in 1903, this pea company was located in the valley of the Minnesota River, the Dakota Sioux name for "cloudy water," just southwest of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the state capital. This is where there's a "confluence" with the even cloudier and muddier Mississippi River giving the whole area, including the surrounding towns like LeSueur, the title of "the Minnesota Valley." Lesueur is the name of the original explorer of the area, a Frenchmen of the early 1700's. By 1950, the "Jolly Green Giant" was so popular, such an "icon" as we say today, with a cartoon character created, etc., he became the basis of the company's new name. So that is where Green Giant comes from, modern marketing, not ancient lore...
The Green Giant Arborvitae is more properly named by tree scientists the "Thuja Plicata," with the other common historic names being, "giant cedar," also "western cedar," and "red cedar." There's only one other Arborvitae specie in all of North America, the "eastern cedar," or "white cedar," with "Thuja Occidentalis," as the tree scientist's Latin name, the botanist's name. This short tree is actually what we usually think of when the "genus" juniper is mentioned.
Funny that the eastern cedar was given the Latin name for "west" which is "occidental." You see? As I have observed before, what's in a name? Highland Hill Farm is not located in a town called Highland Hills, or, on Highland Hill Road, etc. Scottish Highland Hills cows that we grazed on our first property provided our company with a distinctive name when we sold our first trees in 1978.
Green Giant Arborvitae ranges naturally all across the United States from Massachusetts, southwesterly to Texas and New Mexico, through northern Arizona, up the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the state of Washington, and British Columbia beyond.
What does arborvitae mean anyway? Now that we know about the derivation of "Green Giant," here's how the Latin name Arborvitae, or "tree of life," came about. As the first explorers of Canada were mapping the St. Lawrence River in 1536, the tree was used for medicine which saved their leader and most of the men too. Jacques Cartier explored the islands off eastern Canada, and then sailed westward where he entered the St. Lawrence River and found Quebec and a Royal Mountain (Mont Real, which is now called "Montreal"). Cartier was searching for the passage to China so many other explorers would also fail to find. Cartier and his men had to spend a long winter inside a little fort, away from the any sun, where they subsisted on meat, fish, and bread, eating no fruits or vegetables. As scurvy
