Dwarf Juniper (Juniperus communis, Linn.)—Shrub of sprawling habit, or small tree 20 to 3o feet, with short trunk and irregular, open head of erect branches. Bark loosely scaly, thin, reddish brown. Wood hard, fine textured, light brown, durable in soil. Buds loosely scaly, small, pointed. Leaves in threes, boat shaped, lined with a white bloom on the concave (upper) side, spiny, spreading, dark green, shiny below; to inch long; in winter, bronze green; persistent for many years. Flowers moncecious, axillary, in cone-like aments. Fruits ripe third autumn; berries bright blue with pale bloom, flesh mealy, soft; seeds i to 3. Preferred habitat, dry limestone hills; waste land. Distribution, Greenland to Alaska; south to Pennsylvania and Nebraska, in Rocky Mountains as far south as Texas, New Mexico and Arizona; Alaska to northern California. Uses: Planted for hedges, windbreaks and as a cover for waste land on seashore. Berries used to flavour gin.
This indefatigable little tree colonist has not only settled in most of the colder parts of this country, but it is found in the Eastern Hemisphere from the broad stretches of the North even to the mountains of southern Europe, northern Africa and the Himalayas. In America it assumes a definite tree habit only in southern Illinois. I t would seem as if the limestone of these uplands gave the procumbent, incapable sprawler backbone enough to stand up and take its place among trees. In another particular this species lacks energy; it requires three years to ripen a crop of berries.
Out of J. communis has sprung a race of low junipers—impor tant 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. coin rrunis 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 Amer ica, 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 4o 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, moncecious,
in scaly aments. Fruits ripe second season, oblong or round, to I inch long, brown, with pale bloom; seeds t 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 semi arid 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 cin namon and is shed in papery scales. It is a pity that this dainty juniper, whith 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 pachyphlera, 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 6o 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 thick ness, and the regularity of the deep, vertical furrowing seems strikingly artificial. The tree is called "alligator juniper" in Ari zona. 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.