94 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. CONIFERZ. 
of the trunk is from an eighth to a quarter of an inch in thickness, light brown tinged with red, 
and separated into long narrow scales, fringed on the margins, and persistent for many years. 
The branchlets are slender and four-angled, but after the disappearance of the leaves become terete, 
and are covered with close dark brown bark tinged with red or gray, or occasionally with brighter 
red slightly scaly bark. The leaves are opposite in pairs, closely appressed, acute, acuminate with short 
slender points or occasionally obtuse, rounded and eglandular or often glandular on the back, entire, 
about one sixteenth of an inch long, and dark blue-green or glaucous, turning russet or yellow-brown 
during the winter at the north, beginning usually in their third season to grow hard and woody, 
and remaining for two or three years longer on the branches; those of young plants and vigorous 
branches are linear-lanceolate, long-pointed, light yellow-green, eglandular, and from one half to three 
quarters of an inch in length. The flowers are dicecious or very rarely monecious, opening after the 
first warm days of spring from February at the south to May at the north. The staminate flower is 
about an eighth of an inch long, with from ten to twelve stamens, their connectives or anther-scales 
being rounded and entire, with four or occasionally five or six pollen-sacs. The scales of the 
pistillate flower are spreading and acute, and become obliterated from the fruit. This is subglobose, 
from a quarter to a third of an inch in diameter, pale green when fully grown, and dark blue and 
covered with a glaucous bloom at maturity, with a firm epidermis, thin sweetish resmous flesh, and one 
or two or rarely three or four seeds... The seeds are ovate, acute and occasionally apiculate at the 
apex, nearly terete, or variously angled and grooved, light chestnut-brown and lustrous, marked below 
with comparatively small two-lobed hilums, and from one sixteenth to nearly one eighth of an inch in 
length, with a thick bony outer coat, a pale brown membranaceous inner coat, and an embryo with two 
cotyledons. 
Juniperus Virginiana, which is the largest and most valuable of the American Junipers, is the 
most widely distributed coniferous tree of North America. From southern Nova Scotia and New 
Brunswick it ranges southward to Cape Malabar and the shores of Tampa Bay, Florida, westward to 
the valley of the lower Ottawa River and the shores of Georgian Bay,’ eastern Dakota,’ central 
Nebraska* and Kansas,® the Indian Territory, and the valley of the Colorado River in Texas, and from 
the Black Hills of Dakota and the hills of northern and western Nebraska through the mountain 
regions of Montana, Idaho, northern Washington, and southern British Columbia to Vancouver’s 
Island, and southward along the Rocky Mountains to northern New Mexico and to Utah, Nevada, and 
northern Arizona.® Comparatively rare in the maritime provinces of Canada, and in Quebec, where it is 
usually confined to rocky river banks, ascending for some distance the streams flowing into the St. 
Lawrence above Montreal, it is generally found in similar situations in Ontario, but is more common, 
especially in the neighborhood of the Bay of Quente, covering large areas around its shores. In the 
northern, middle, and south Atlantic states Juniperus Virginiana is scattered over dry gravelly slopes 
and rocky ridges often immediately on the seacoast, resisting with its stunted stem and short tough 
branches the fiercest gales, or grows in rich soil by the borders of highways and fences, when birds have 
scattered its seeds, but does not ascend the mountains of New England and New York nor the high 
Alleghanies ; in middle Kentucky and Tennessee and in northern Alabama and Mississippi it covers 
great areas of low rolling limestone hills, with nearly pure forests of small bushy trees; in the coast 
region of the eastern Gulf states it grows in deep swamps to a large size, becoming a tall wide-topped 
tree, with graceful somewhat pendulous branches; in western Louisiana, Texas, and southern Arkansas 
1 The statement universally made that the fruit of Juniperus ® Williams, Bull. No. 43 South Dakota Agric. College, 103. 
Virginana does not ripen until the second season is probably cor- * Bessey, Rep. Nebraska State Board Agric. 1894, 101. 
rect for some parts of the country, but Mr. J. G. Jack has noticed 5 Mason, 8th Bienn. Rep. State Board Agric. Kansas, 273. 
that the trees in the neighborhood of Boston ripen their fruit dur- § Juniperus Virginiana was collected on the upper slopes of the 
ing the first autumn (Bot. Gazette, xviii. 372). Grand Cafion of the Colorado by J. W. Toumey and C. S. Sargent 
2 Brunet, Cat. Vég. Lig. Can. 60. — Provancher, Flore Canadienne, in September, 1894. 
ii. 559.— Macoun, Cat. Can. Pl. 462. 
