CONIFERiE 



87 



open head, slender brauehlets, smooth, lustrous, and conspicuously 3-angled between 

 the short nodes during their first and second years, light yellow tinged with red, 

 gradually growing darker, their dark red-brown bark separating in the third season 

 into small thin scales, and ovate acute buds about ^ long and loosely covered with 

 scale-like leaves ; more often a shrub, with many short slender stems prostrate at 

 the base and turning upward and forming a broad mass sometimes 20 across and 

 3 or 4 high; at high elevations and in the extreme north prostrate, with long de- 

 cumbent stems (var. Sibirica, Rydb.). Bark about ^^g' thick, dark reddish brown, 

 separating irregularly into many loose papery persistent scales. Wood hard, close- 

 grained, very durable in contact with the soil, light brown, with pale sapwood. In 



northern Europe the sweet aromatic fruit of this tree is used in large quantities to 

 impart its peculiar flavor to gin ; occasionally employed in medicine. 



Distribution. Southern Greenland to the highlands of Pennsylvania, northern 

 Nebraska, along the Rocky Mountains to western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, 

 and on the Pacific coast from Alaska to northern California, only becoming truly 

 arborescent in America on the limestone hills of southern Illinois ; in the Old World 

 widely distributed through all the northern hemisphere from arctic Asia and Europe 

 to the Himalayas and the mountains of the Mediterranean Basin. 



Often planted, especially in some of its pyramidal and dwarf forms, in the eastern 

 United States and in the countries of western, central, and northern Europe. 



2. Leaves scale-like, closely appressed and adnate to the branches. 

 *Fruit large, reddish brown. 

 -t-Seeds single or few. 



2. Juniperus Californioa, Carr. Juniper. 



Leaves usually in 3's, closely appressed, thickened, slightly keeled and conspicu- 

 ously glandular-pitted on the back, rounded at the apex, distinctly cartilaginously 

 fringed on the margins, light yellow-green, about ^' long, dying and turning brown 

 on the branch at the end of two or three years; on vigorous shoots linear-lanceolate, 

 rigid, sharp-pointed, j-^' long, whitish on the upper surface. Flovrers from 

 January to March; staminate of 18-20 stamens, disposed in 3's, with rhomboidal 



