65. Chinese Juniper

Location: Okanogan Lane at the Southwest corner of the Atmospheric Science Building

Historical Background: The Chinese juniper is a popular species for bonsai cultivation. Another kind of juniper, called by the French "genièvre," had its berries used to flavor the beverage that became known as gin. Oil of juniper has a lovely warm, fresh, balsamic, woody pine needle odor. It is used medicinally to treat a variety of ailments.

Non-native

Native Range: Asia - China, Myanmar, Korea, Japan

Identifying Features: A small tree, it can be very sparse like this specimen or dense and conical like a cypress, with dense foliage tight against the branches. It is a dull green, with two types of leaves, some in scales, some in awl shape, prickly in sets of twos and threes with single sharp needles, and scale leaves, like those of a Western redcedar, small and blunt and overlapping (though not in the butterfly shape of the redcedar nor in the broad sprays of that tree). This species produces Juniper berries, blueish fruity cones that are lump and glaucous, about 6mm across. 

Identifying Features In Depth:

1. Form: A small tree, to a height of about 65’ (20m). With an array of varieties, the Chinese Juniper can be very sparse like this specimen or dense and conical like a cypress, with dense foliage tight against the branches. It can also be multi stemmed and spreading. Branches are ascendant in general, but can exhibit all kinds of growing patterns in shrub form and may often be seen with masses of cones.

2. Leaves: Leaves have two forms, they can be awl like- prickly along branches in sets of two or three, or scale like, overlapping one another to form blunt arrangements which are very dense in nature. Awl needles are about 1cm long, all are a yellow green.

3. Bark: A deep fibrous dark brown, peeling off in strips.

4. Reproductive Bodies: Male cones are tiny and yellow, appearing on the tips of scale needle arrangements in spring and giving the tree a yellow tinge. Female cones are like little berries, bluish in color and glaucous, lumpy with rounded scales visible. They generally form in tight clusters.