RED JUNIPER; RED CEDAR; SAVIN (Juniperus Virginian°, Linn.). Shrub to 100 feet. Narrow, compact, pyramidal becoming loose and irregular when old. Bark thin, red, stringy, deeply corrugated and buttressed at base. Wood close-grained, weak, red, fragrant, brittle, used for pencils, moth-proof chests and cupboards, railroad ties, and posts. Leaves opposite, blue-green, evergreen, of two types: on young shoots, scattered, or 2-ranked, long-pointed, yellow-green, white-lined, at right angles with twig, to I inch long; on older twigs, minute, paired, scale-like, closely appressed to the stem. Rusty brown in winter. Persistent many years.
Flowers scaly, cone-like clusters, at ends of short twigs, Staminate of few scales. each with several pollen sacs under neath; pistillate of violet, fleshy scales with 2 ovules nude' each; rarely both kinds on same tree. Fruit a modified cone, becoming a fleshy, sweet, resinous, blue berry, the size of a pea. Borne in profusion. Dist.: Gravelly, dry situations in eastern North America, and to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains; often in forests; best in peaty swamps of 'owe' Mississippi Valley.