170 JUNIPERUS COMMUNIS. 



J. cliinensis procumbens, Endlicher, Synops. Conif. 21. Beissner, Nadelholzk. 

 121. J. procumbens, Siebold and Zuccarini, Fl. Jap. II. 59, t. 127, tig 3. 

 J. japonica, Carriers, Traite Conif. ed. II. 31. Gordon, Pinet ed. II. 160. 



Other varieties are known as Jacoliana, pendula, pendula aurea and 

 pyramidcdis. 



Although long recognised as one of the most ornamental of Junipers, 

 for the lawn and flower-garden very little is known respecting the 

 habitat and distribution of Juniperus chinensis. Specimens of undoubted 

 Chinese origin are preserved in the national Herbaria but these are. 

 mostly from cultivated plants, and no record is found of its having 

 been seen growing wild in any locality in China accessible to- 

 Europeans ; a circumstance easily accounted for by the presence 

 everywhere of a dense population.* It appears to grow spontaneously 

 on the mountains of central Japan, and there is ample evidence of its 

 having been for centuries past cultivated by the Japanese.f 



Juniperus chinensis was introduced into British gardens in 1804 along, 

 with other Chinese plants by William Kerr, a young gardener employed 

 in the Royal Gardens at Kew who was sent on a botanical mission to- 

 the Far East in 1803.J Its remarkable adaptability to a wide range of 

 temperature is shown by its endurance of our severest winters without 

 injury, and by its vigorous and healthy growth in the sub-tropical Botanic 

 Gardens of Sydney and Adelaide in Australia. Of the varieties cultivated 

 in Great Britain aurea is by far the most ornamental that has originated 

 in European gardens ; the others described above were introduced from 

 Japan by the late Mr. John Gould Yeitch and Mr. Robert Fortune with 

 the exception of a vigorous form of procumbens which was distributed 

 from an English nursery. 



Juniperus communis. 



In Great Britain usually a shrub with spreading sometimes; 

 prostrate branches which turn upwards at the end, and which with 

 their appendages form a more or less dense bush several feet through 

 but not more than 3 to 5 feet high ; less frequently a low 

 tree 15 20 or more feet high with relatively short spreading or 

 ascending branches covered with smooth reddish brown bark, and 

 much ramified at the distal end. Branchlets slender, from which 

 numerous herbaceous shoots are produced at short intervals in a four- 

 ranked arrangement, but which is often much obscured. Leaves in 

 whorls of three, subulate, rigid, pungent or spine-tipped, spreading, 

 nearly at a right angle to the shoot, 0*25 0*5 inch long, silvery 

 white with green margins above, grass-green and obscurely keeled 



* An herbarium specimen gathered by Sir Joseph Hooker in Tibetian territory north 



SW-it-n -ici iifC4-Vt *-vii4- ,-J rt ,,K4- .I., J*_. _ 3 _ UP 3 . ' J ^.A* 4-1, ~f 4- K r^l-Iv 



of 



Sikkim is, without doubt, indigenous and affords evidence of the presence of the Chinese. 

 Juniper in a locality very remote from that from which it was originally introduced. 



t Two venerable Junipers 70 to 80 feet high Avith hollow trunks more than six feet in 

 diameter standing in front of a Buddhist temple in Nangano, Japan, and which must be 

 several centuries old, are referred to Juniperus chinensis by Professor Sargent, Forest 

 Flora of Japan, p. 78. 



+ His name is commemorated by the genus Kerria. Among other beauti ul plant* 

 introduced by him was the grand old Tiger Lily, Lilium tigrlmun. 



