CONIFER. 
SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 17 
the following spring, its three upper scales become consolidated above the ovules, and at the beginning 
of the second winter it is globose, hard, light green, and about three quarters of its full size, the 
albumen of the seeds being soft and milky; it continues to develop during the following season, the 
albumen of the seeds gradually hardening; late in the summer it becomes dark blue or bluish black 
and covered with a glaucous bloom, and at maturity is subglobose or oblong, tipped with the remnants 
of the enlarged points of the ovules and raised on a short stem clothed by the unchanged scales 
which formed the outer covering of the female flower; the fruit is then about a quarter of an inch in 
diameter, with soft mealy resinous sweet flesh and from one to three seeds; when not eaten by birds it 
often remains on the branches one or two years after ripening.’ The seeds are ovate, acute, irregularly 
angled or flattened by mutual pressure, deeply penetrated by the numerous prominent thin-walled 
uregularly shaped resin-glands, and free from the flesh only near the bright brown lustrous apex, 
about an eighth of an inch long, with a thick bony outer coat, a membranaceous light chestnut-brown 
inner coat, and a large two-lobed basal hilum to which the flesh is firmly attached. 
Juniperus communis, which is the most widely distributed tree of the northern hemisphere, ranges 
in the New World across the continent and from southern Greenland? to the highlands of Pennsyl- 
vania on the Atlantic coast, and to northern Nebraska*® and along the Rocky Mountains to Arizona,* 
New Mexico, and western Texas,> and on the Pacific coast from Alaska® to northern California.’ In 
the Old World it inhabits the Kurile Islands * and Kamtschatka, and is widely spread over the remainder 
of northern, central, and eastern Asia, ranging southward to the northwestern Himalayas, where it 
sometimes ascends to 14,000 feet above the sea-level ; it is common all through northern and central 
Europe, ascending’ mountain ranges to elevations of four or five thousand feet, and occurs, although 
less commonly, in the countries of the Mediterranean basin. In North America, although nowhere very 
abundant, it is generally distributed, growing, toward the southern limits of its range in the east, on 
gravelly sterile slopes or worn-out pastures, and in the west on high exposed mountain-slopes, and 
usually in shrubby forms only a few feet high, not assuming the habit of a small tree except in southern 
Illinois. Here on the bald and broken summits of conglomerate sandstone and limestone hills, in 
Union, Williamson, Johnson, Saline, Pope, Gallatin, and Hardin counties, it frequently attains a height 
of twenty-five feet and forms a trunk eight or ten inches in diameter, growing with Juniperus 
Virginiana, Acer spicatum, Crategus cordata, Quercus minor, Quercus rubra, and Vaccinium 
vacillans. In northern Maine and on the alpine summits of the mountains of New England and New 
York, in northern Minnesota, on the Rocky Mountains, where it sometimes ascends to elevations of 
10,000 feet, and on the mountains of British America and farther northward on both sides of the 
continent, it assumes its prostrate decumbent form on which the leaves are usually somewhat broader 
than on plants with erect stems. In northern and central Europe Juniperus communis inhabits plains 
and mountain-slopes, often ascending above the upper limit of the forest, and in some parts of northern 
Germany it is often gregarious, covering great areas with an open growth of shrubby plants which 
frequently, under the shade of trees, assume an arborescent habit and attain a height of thirty or forty 
feet ;° in the countries bordering the Mediterranean and in western Asia it is usually found only on 
high mountain-slopes, sometimes ascending to elevations of nearly six thousand feet, although on the 
1 J. G. Jack, Bot. Gazette, xviii. 369, t. 33. 
Mr. Jack’s observations on the development of the flowers and 
fruit of Juniperus communis in the Arnold Arboretum first estab- 
lished the fact that the fruit of this species, in New England at 
least, does not mature until the third year. 
2 Hooker f. Trans. Linn. Soc. xxiii. 302 (Arctic Plants). — Rink, 
Danish Greenland, 410. 
3 Bessey, Rep. Nebraska State Board Agric. 1894, 101. 
4 Juniperus communis occurs on the high San Francisco peaks. 
5 Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. ii.555 (Man. Pl. W. Teas). 
6 Bongard, Mem. Phys. Nat. Pt. 2, Acad. Sci. St. Pétersbourg, ii. 
163 (Veg. Sitcha) (Juniperus nana). — Rothrock, Smithsonian Rep. 
1867, 455 (Fl. Alaska) (Juniperus nana). — F. Kurtz, Bot. Jahrb. 
xix. 425 (Fl. Chilcatgebietes). 
7 Engelmann, Brewer & Watson Bot. Cal. ii. 113. — Lemmon, 
Rep. California State Board Forestry, iii. 184 (Cone-Bearers of Cali- 
fornia); West-American Cone-Bearers, 78. 
8 Miyabe, Afem. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. iv. 260 (Fl. Aurile Islands). 
9 Willkomm, Forst. Fl. ed. 2, 261, f. 34. 
