90% of them are rotten on the butt, and they have a million whippy little limbs from the ground to the top. I really do hate red cedars. I much prefer the yellow ones

And no matter how many insults you hurl at it, it still gives you a smile like in the top pic!!

Now you’re getting it lol

It even has a bushy eyebrow.

Swing by Western Oklahoma. You'll really hate them.

And they always give up a slice of pie.

If I had to cut them down for a living I'd probably hate them too.

i love working with the milled lumber and I love how durable it is in exterior applications.

But they smell so good and are very resistant to rot, and they make a really neat looking canoe!

Yellow cedar can do anything reds can do, but they’re prettier wood, smell better, and it takes eons to rot. AND, they’re way nicer to cut: less brush on them, seldom any rot in them, the fibers are a lot stronger, so they cooperate better in terms of making them go where you want (I’m not gonna get into the finer details of how to swing a tree 180 degrees off it’s lean, you’ll just have to trust me that yellows do it better)

They take over pastures. Good deer habitat but not good pasture.

Unfortunately I deal with them a lot, they’re a hot commodity at the mills and the export yards. The spruce and hemlock market rises and falls depending on demand, which fluctuates a lot. The demand for cedar is always very high. Especially yellow cedar, but it’s more of a niche market, most of it is sold to Japan to make temples and burial boxes (it’s similar in color and grain to the cypress they used traditionally). Red cedar is in constant high demand for siding, roofing, fencing, trim, etc.

Yellow cedar is not as stable as western red cedar, it moves more. I don't think yellow cedar is a prettier wood, it's just a plain Jane yellow like so many other species. I'll take the reddish, pinkish brown of red cedar all day long.

And the smell? Yellow cedar reminds me of raw potatoes, not a terrible smell but I much prefer the aroma of red cedar.

Availability of yellow cedar here in PA is limited and that makes it expensive. Western red cedar is readily available and less expensive but not cheap.

Both are rated durable to very durable for exterior use. Yellow cedar does have the edge in better resistance to insect attacks.

Stable in what way? I’ve cut thousands upon thousands of both of them…seeing as neither yellow cedar nor WESTERN red cedar grow in PA, I’ll assume you haven’t. If you’re talking about milling, I’ll take your word for it, I don’t mill logs, I make them. However what I’m speaking of is the wood fibers being strong enough to support the tree while I swing it around, it’s called using a Dutchman. A yellow cedar will swing a full 360 if you let it, once you get it committed into the Dutch and then into your lay, you saw it clean off the stump when it’s over the hole, or it’ll pull too far. When you try to swing a red cedar, they commit to the dutchman, and “pop” as they fall over sideways across all your beautiful fell and buck.

Yeah, I'm talking about kiln-dried or air dried milled lumber. By stable I mean that yellow cedar moves more with changes in humidity/moisture content than red cedar.

I don't cut the trees, I build stuff with the wood from them.

This!
Yellow and red cedar are two completely different woods, I like them both, but red cedar is really only good for appearance and fragrance imo, great for sauna interiors, etc.. Yellow cedar is much denser and stronger than red, I like the smell too. I've noticed that a few folks don't like the smell of yellow cedar, especially cutters, I like it. The yellow cedar in Washington is generally superior to that that comes out of B.C. and SE Alaska; larger diameter, and denser ring count, generally 40+ rings per inch. BTW, it makes a great wood for carving, doesn't splinter, you can easily carve any direction you want without it chipping.

The Red cedar we see in the lower 48, on the eastern side is Eastern Red Cedar, (Juniperus virginiana) the red cedar AK is talking about is a completely different tree. (Thuja plicata).

again we see the issue with using common names to identify botanical things.

That’s why I specified western red cedar when I realized he was in PA. I’ve never been east of Montana, so I have no clue what grows there.

It’s very localized around here, one part of an island will have crappy stunted yellow cedar, which are still great wood, but they’ll be like 24”-30” and 800 years old, and a few inlets over you’ll run into yellows that are 7’ on the stump and similar in age.

We have lots of red cedar in the Eastern states. Rarely see one as large as the one in your picture. Birds reseed them under fences and powerlines.

They aren’t the same species, the western variety is what we have. And I’m cutting old growth 95% of the time. We occasionally do second growth patches that were harvested during the ramp up to WW2