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Junipers — Part 2

Out of J. communis has sprung a race of low junipers--important horticultural varieties, including graceful weeping forms, compact globose ones, some spire-like and some with golden foliage. The Irish juniper, one of the most popular varieties, has a tapering habit, very narrow, like a miniature Lombardy poplar. J. communis is the only species whose leaves are spreading throughout. On the remaining ten native species the leaves are minute and closely appressed to the stem, except a few whose new shoots imitate the dwarf juniper. In Europe, much more than in America, the berries are gathered and consumed in the making of gin. From time immemorial the flavour of the juniper berry has been the sine qua non to quality in this beverage.

California Juniper (Juniperus Californica, Carr.)--Conical or broad and open-headed tree, 20 to 40 feet high, with irregular, fluted trunk and twisted limbs. Bark thin, pale grey, hanging in loose plate-like scales. Wood soft, fine grained, reddish brown, durable in soil. Leaves in threes, on older twigs, thick keeled, set close to twig, pale yellow-green; on new shoots, linear, pale lined, spiny, spreading. Flowers, January to March, monoecious, in scaly aments. Fruits ripe second season, oblong or round, 1/2 to 3/4 inch long, brown, with pale bloom; seeds 1 to 2, large. Preferred habitat, dry plains and slopes of mountains. Distribution, coast mountains from the lower Sacramento Valley to Lower California; east into Sierra Nevada. Uses: Wood for posts and for fuel. Fruit eaten by Indians. Locally planted to some extent on semiarid land.

The Utah Juniper (Juniper Utahensis, Lemm.) takes the place of the California species in the arid regions between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains. It is called the desert juniper, is gnarled like its Western relative, and has much the same habit, though its round berry, with a solitary seed, and its slender twigs distinguish it. This little tree serves the settler and the Indian just as the California species does.

The Drooping Juniper (Juniperus flaccida, Schlecht.) has long, flexible branchlets that give it grace beyond the portion allotted to its kindred. The bark of this little tree is bright cinnamon and is shed in papery scales. It is a pity that this dainty juniper, which is met in gardens of Algiers and in the south of France, should be unknown to horticulture in its own country. It wastes its beauty on uninhabited slopes of the Chisos Mountains in southwestern Texas, and is common at high altitudes across the Mexican border.

The Checker-barked Juniper (Juniperus pachyphloea, Torr.) also inhabits southwestern Texas, following arid slopes between 4,000 and 6,000 feet in altitude, and invading New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. It is a considerable tree, 40 to 60 feet high, with short, stout trunk and broad, horizontal spread of limb--a lusty tree to be produced on arid soil. The peculiar checkered bark gives it distinction in the genus. It is often 3 to 4 inches in thickness, and the regularity of the deep, vertical furrowing seems strikingly artificial. The tree is called "alligator juniper" in Arizona. The thickness of the bark is exceptional among junipers.

The Indians gather the fruits, which are large and copiously borne by mature trees, and put them away for winter. Though resinous in taste, the cake made out of these berries ground into meal is by no means unpalatable to white folks. Baked in the sun, it is light, sweet and easily digested. The large and plentiful berries of the other mountain junipers are used in the same way.

The One-seeded Juniper (Juniperus monosperma, Sarg.) is easily distinguished by its ashy grey bark in seasons where the berry is not there to tell the tale. This thin bark is stripped into its fibres and woven into cloth and mats by Indians. Girths of their saddles are woven of it. The berries also furnish food.

The tree grows to 50 feet high, with a strongly buttressed trunk 8 or 10 feet in girth. The limbs are short, with clustering grey-green foliage of the minute, scale-like sort. This is a tree of the mountain slope or the high plateau, ranging from Colorado to Texas, and west to Arizona, forming forests in southern Colorado and Utah. Fencing and fuel consume some wood each year.

The Rock Cedar (Juniperus sabinoides, Nees.) is a considerable tree in the lowlands of the central counties of Texas, but dwindles in size as it ascends the mountains and arid regions to the west and south. This tree has distinctly quadrangular twigs by the paired, opposite arrangement of its strongly keeled leaves. The foliage mass is loose and irregular, with a dark blue-green cast. Young shoots bear linear, free, spiny leaves 1/2 inch long. The bark is reticulated by an intricate network of furrows leaving flat plates between. This juniper furnishes much fuel as well as a considerable supply of fence posts, railroad ties and telegraph poles in a region where wood is not plenty.