118 AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



WESTERN JUNIPER (Juniperus occidentalis) is a high mountain tree 

 with all the characteristics belonging to that class of timber. The 

 trunks are short and strong, the limbs wide-spreading, the wood of slow 

 growth, and dense. The tree attains a diameter of ten inches in about 

 130 years. Trunks ten feet in diameter have been reported, but trees 

 that large would be hard to find now. John Muir said that the western 

 juniper lives 2,000 years, and that the tree is never uprooted by wind. 

 The trunk is usually short, six or eight feet being a fair average, and very 

 knotty. However, when a block of clear wood is found, it is high class, 

 the heaviest of the cedars, straight grain, soft, compact, brittle. The 

 summerwood is so narrow that it resembles a fine, black line. The 

 medullary rays are numerous and very obscure. The wood is slightly 

 aromatic, splits easily, works nicely, and in color is brown, tinged with 

 red. In appearance, the sapwood suggests spruce. The average height 

 of the trees is from twenty-five to forty-five feet, diameter two to four 

 feet. The range of this tree is in Idaho, eastern Oregon, and through the 

 Cascades and Sierras to southern California. It seldom occurs below 

 an altitude of 6,000 feet, and ascends to 10,000 or more. On the highest 

 summits it is deformed and stunted. Its fruit is eaten by Indians, and 

 it furnishes fuel for mountain camps and ranches, timber for mines, and 

 sometimes a little lumber. The crooked limbs and trunks are made into 

 corral fences where better material cannot be had. The wood has been 

 found suitable for lead pencils, but that of proper quality is too scarce 

 to attract manufacturers. Other names for this tree are juniper, cedar, 

 yellow cedar, western cedar, western red cedar, and western juniper. 

 Some of these names are applied to other species of the same region. 





