176 ARBORESCENT VARIETY OF JUNIPER US COMMUNIS, 



the parent stem, attaining the height of fully fifteen feet in old 

 plants, forming a column cylindrical and varying in circumfer- 

 ence, in the largest one seen, I should say, about five or six feet, 

 a beautiful column of greenery, surpassing in appearance many 

 exotic cultivated species of its tribe. 



Studying this juniper from a botanical view, the sole 

 difference presented to us is the difference in growth between it 

 and the ground juniper. In foliage, infloresence, and fruit they 

 are alike. The only question is, from its mode of growth should 

 we describe it as a marked variety. In the locality where the 

 upright plants grew were many circles or saucers of the low 

 growing plant. In some of these the terminal (peripheral) 

 branches showed a tendency to upward growth. Individual, 

 central branches grew upwards a foot or more above their 

 neighbours. Some arborescent plants seemed to rise from pros- 

 trate roots. They, however, did not assume the perfect cylin- 

 drical form of the true shrubby plants which we found growing 

 independently and remote from the ground-lying form. The 

 fact seemed that upgrowth exists most strongly in isolated 

 plants of this kind. The individual difference between the 

 junipers mentioned above is so great as to the eye of any ordi- 

 nary observer, even though having botanical knowledge, to cause 

 the supposition that they were distinct species. Closer observa- 

 tion, however, convinces that the plants are the same though 

 varying in growth. 



We will, for descriptive purposes, take first, Linnseus's 

 diagnosis of his Juniperus communis from the Sps. Plantar., 

 1470, viz.: "A large shrub, extremities of the branches smooth 

 and angular; leaves in threes, linear, acerose, sharply mucronate, 

 shining green beneath, but with a glaucous line along the centre 

 of the upper surface, they are resupinate, turning their upper 

 surface to the ground ; barren flowers in aments, small, axillary, 

 with roundish stipitate scales, enclosing the anthers ; fertile 

 flowers on another plant having a small, three-parted involucre 

 growing to the scales, which are three ; fruit fleshy, berried, of 

 a dark, purplish color, formed of the confluent succulent scales, 



