Juniper
Juniperus communis
About
One of only three conifer species native to the UK. An evergreen small tree or shrub, ranging from 10 metres tall to a low shrub in exposed locations.
It has male and female cones on separate plants so requires wind pollination to transfer pollen from male to female cones. Male trees or shrubs naturally live longer than female trees or shrubs; a male tree or shrub can live more than 2000 years. It has aromatic, needle-like grey-green leaves and small ovoid green berry-like cones ripening to black. These “berries” are used to flavour gin and are popular in liqueurs and sauces.
It provides dense cover for small nesting birds like goldcrest and birds including fieldfare, song thrush and mistle thrush will eat the berries. It is a food plant of moth caterpillars including the juniper pug, juniper carpet and chestnut-coloured carpet.
Conservation status
Common Juniper is one of the most common and widespread tree species in the Northern hemisphere and it is also widely distributed throughout the British Isles. It is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN red list, however it is declining rapidly and could even become extinct in lowland England. It is listed as a priority species on the UK Biodiversity Action Plan, on the grounds that it is declining. Its decline is due to a number of reasons, change in land management, poor reproductive capacity, competition with other plants which is largely climate related, and disease.
The Yorkshire Dales only has a small number of juniper trees, with some Juniper scrub woodlands of UK importance because of their rarity.
Phytophthora austrocedri is an aggressive pathogen that infects and kills native juniper trees and unfortunately this disease is affecting the trees in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
For an amateur
native juniper’s tricky
to tell from yew with its poison needles
and bark –– Both are sacred, and
a yew may live forever, but juniper’s
astringent purple berries have slaked
eternities of thirst at the Temple
of Gin & Tonic. Now juniper, a tree that gives
so freely of its mothers’ milk
can’t drink, with roots under attack
from a fungus, a fungus that loves
to spread its message, under the surface
leaving lesions like tongues
screaming fire, turning evergreen to brown
doing its worst, and its best
Length: 55 seconds
Poem: Dr Karen McCarthy Woolf
Read by: Dr Karen McCarthy Woolf
Sculpture
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