JUNIPER 199 



We read in the Bible how Elijah fled into the wilderness 

 of Beersheba from the face of King Ahab, and how he lay and 

 slept under a juniper-tree, and the plant is also mentioned 

 in divers other places in the Scriptures, but the word as 

 translated is wrongly given. The Biblical juniper, a desert 

 shrub growing some ten feet in height, is in reality a 

 kind of broom, that, as in the days of the prophet, affords 

 welcome shelter to the weary and sun-smitten traveller. 



The juniper is very rigid in its general growth and 

 much branched, this rigidity and angularity of growth, 

 this throwing out of many small branches rather than a 

 few larger ones, being a marked feature in plants exposed 

 to the sweeping blasts that search the bleak hillside, and a 

 necessary result of the hardness of the conditions against 

 which they have to contend. When the wood attains to a 

 workable size it is in considerable request for veneering, 

 and for the fabrication of small fancy wares of one sort 

 or another, being very hard, very pleasantly aromatic, of a 

 fine red colour, beautifully veined, and taking an excellent 

 polish. 



The leaves of the juniper are evergreen, very numerous, 

 long in proportion to their width, and arranged in spread- 

 ing groups of three together. They are so rigid as to be 

 almost spiny in character, of a greyish colour above, and 

 of a dark green on their under-surfaces, a curious reversal 

 of what one finds to be the general rule in foliage, that 

 the lower surfaces are lighter than the upper. 



The stamen-bearing flowers are in small ovoid catkins 

 on one plant, and the pistillate flowers in small globose 

 catkins on another, the flowering season being in Spring. 

 The individual flowers are very minute, but the general 



