What it means
Alder people are said to be the doers of the calendar. They make decisions fast, back themselves and usually have a cause or project they want to push forward. That confidence draws people in, and Alders are often the ones who get a group to commit. They can be impatient with long discussion. The tradition says they do best with a clear target and the freedom to go after it their own way.
Strengths
Confidence, a natural pull on other people, speed from idea to action, courage in a fight worth having, and real loyalty to the people who come along.
Challenges
Impatience, a short fuse when blocked, trampling the details on the way to the goal, and finding it hard to sit still once the momentum stops.
Alder dates and Ogham letter
Alder runs from March 18 to April 14 (28 days). Its Ogham letter is Fearn, the letter for the sound F. The dates come from the tree calendar Robert Graves set out in The White Goddess (1948): thirteen 28-day months named after Ogham letters in his Beth-Luis-Nion order, plus one spare day, December 23. It is a modern system inspired by the Ogham, not a calendar recorded from the ancient Druids, and scholars think only some of the Ogham letter names first meant trees. On the Western calendar, Alder starts in Pisces and the Sun moves into Aries around March 21, so roughly the first 3 days are Pisces Suns and the last 25 are Aries.
The alder in folklore
Alder grows along rivers and lakes, and its wood, pale when cut, turns orange-red as it meets the air, which gave it a reputation as a bleeding tree. Under water it barely rots, so alder piles were used to support lake dwellings in Ireland and Scotland and buildings in Venice. Graves tied the tree to Bran the Blessed, whose son Gwern carries the Welsh word for alder, and who in the Mabinogion lies down across a river so his army can cross over him.
How Cosmic Array reads it
Your tree depends only on the day and month you were born, so the year and birth time don't change it. The Architect blueprint shows your Celtic tree next to your Chinese animal, Mayan sign and Egyptian deity, and its written synthesis can set the tree against your Western Sun, Moon and Rising.