JUNIPERUS CALIFORNICA. 167 



this Juniper is where other trees are scarce.* It grows well-nigh 

 everywhere on the islands, in the most diverse situations from the 

 low brackish swamps along the sea-shore to the dry limestone hills 

 inland. A letter written by Sir Hans Sloane to Mr. Ray, the 

 eminent naturalist, contains evidence that the Bermuda Juniper was 

 cultivated in this country in 1684,-f and according to Loudon, also 

 in the following century by Philip Miller at Chelsea, but it is too 

 tender for the open ground ; it has long been a denizen of the 

 Temperate House in the Royal Gardens at Kew. 



Juniperus lermudiana affords an instructive instance of the manner 

 in which an insular flora originates. Its nearest affinity is the Red 

 Cedar, /. virginiana, from which it is chiefly distinguished by its 

 stouter braiichlets, its longer and more obtuse glandular leaves, its 

 larger staminate flowers with more scales and its larger differently 

 coloured fruits. The Red Cedar is abundant all over the eastern 

 portion of the North American continent from Canada to Florida ; its 

 fruits are devoured by birds which void the hard seeds without 

 injury, and by them J. virginiana has been widely dispersed over the 

 American continent and the adjacent islands, and hypothetically by the 

 same agency transplanted to the Bermudas at a remote epoch, for 

 pieces of " cedar " wood were found at a depth of 50 feet below 

 low-water mark during the dredging operations undertaken by the 

 British naval authorities for the construction of a dock. Thus during 

 the course of ages under the influence of the insular climate the 

 Bermuda Juniper has gradually diverged from the parent stock to such 

 a degree as to be recognised as specifically distinct. Analogous, 

 instances occur in the Azores and the Canary Islands which are 

 inhabited by Junipers that are undoubted offshoots of /. Oxycedrus 

 widely distributed over the Mediterranean region. 



Juniperus californica. 



A tree occasionally 40 feet in height with a straight large-lobed y 

 uusymmetrical trunk 1 2 feet in diameter; more often shrubby with 

 numerous stout, often contorted branches which form a broad open 

 head. Branchlets stout, at first light yellow-green changing to bright 

 red-brown in their third or fourth season, and at the end of 

 four or five years after the leaves have fallen, covered with thin 

 grey-brown scaly bark. Leaves usually in threes, closely appressed, 

 slightly keeled and glandular pitted at the base, distinctly fringed on 

 the margin, light yellow-green, about 0'125 inch long and becoming 

 effete in the third year ; on vigorous shoots and young plants, linear- 

 lanceolate, rigid, pungent, 0*25 0*4 inch long, whitish on the upper 

 surface. Staminate flowers about 0*2 inch in length with eighteen 

 twenty-four stamens. Fruits globose, somewhat more than 0'25 inch in 

 diameter, reddish brown with a thick glaucous bloom. Sargent, Silva of 

 North America, X. 79, t. 517. 



* Excellent illustrations of this are given in Garden and Forest, Vol. IV. (1891), pp. 

 294, 295. 



f Hemsley in Gardeners' Chronicle, XIX. (1383), p. 656. 



