Short answers, pulled from the story.
The word cedar entered English around the year 1000 CE as a fixed biblical term. Its journey began with the Greek word kédros which meant either cedar or juniper before Latin speakers adopted it as cedrus.
A mature cedar tree grows tall with a cylindrical trunk that supports a wide leafy crown while young trees display a conical shape that often becomes irregular as they age. Bark on young trees is pale grey-brown and smooth to the touch whereas older bark turns dark grey-brown to blackish and splits into thick ridges and scales.
The oldest known fossil belongs to Cedrus penzhinaensis found in Early Cretaceous sediments within Kamchatka Russia. This wood was discovered in Albian period layers dating back millions of years alongside other conifer families for over 100 million years.
Cedar populations survive only in specific mountainous climates across the western Himalayas and Mediterranean region. Lebanon hosts small numbers of surviving Cedrus libani near the Qadisha Valley World Heritage Site at altitudes between 1,500 and 3,200 meters above sea level.
Human demand for cedar wood has persisted for over 4,000 years since the Epic of Gilgamesh era. Hittite cuneiform text records confirm deliberate planting efforts occurred more than 3,200 years ago during the Hittite Empire at Hattusa.