Juniperus 14^5 



According to Koernicke and Roth ^ the juniper is the characteristic conifer of 

 the Eifel Mountains at an elevation of looo to 2000 ft. Here it grows on all 

 kinds of soil, but best on the heaths of grauwacke, where it often forms large groups 

 and attains about 25 ft. in height. The plates show how variable is the form of the 

 tree here, some being round bushes, and some narrow pyramids. Prof. T. Schube, 

 of Breslau," figures a tree in a forest meadow at Kuchelberg, about 23 ft. high, 

 and 5 ft. 5 in. in girth at a foot above the ground, which he thinks is the finest 

 wild juniper in Silesia. 



Cultivation 



Though it has now been to a great extent displaced by modern introductions, 

 the juniper was a great favourite as a garden shrub in former times, and according 

 to Evelyn* may be formed into most beautiful and useful hedges. He says : " The 

 discreet loosening of the Earth about the Roots also, makes it strangely to prevent 

 your Expectations, by suddenly spreading into a bush fit for a thousand pretty 

 Employments. My Brother having cut out of one only tree, an Arbour capable for 

 three to sit in ; it was at my last measuring seven foot square, and eleven in height, 

 and would certainly have been of much greater altitude and farther spreading, were 

 it not continually kept shorn. But what is most considerable, is the little time since 

 it was planted, being yet hardly ten years, and then it was brought out of the Com- 

 mon a slender bush of about 2 ft. high." He adds : " I have raised them abundantly 

 of their seeds (neither watering nor dunging the soil) which in two months will 

 peep." My experience in raising the seeds of juniper, which agrees with that of 

 Boutcher, and also with Loudon's statement, is that the seeds lie for one year before 

 germinating, even when freshly sown. They keep for some years in the berry 

 without losing their vitality. 



Remarkable Trees 



Though the common juniper seldom in Scandinavia and never in Great Britain 

 attains the size of a timber tree, yet it is so striking a feature in the vegetation of 

 some English hillsides that it cannot be passed by in silence. One of the best 

 instances of its growth is seen on a dry oolite hillside at Hilcot, about two miles 

 from Colesborne, on my own property. (Plate 348.) How old these trees are 

 and how they originated, it is impossible to say ; and though the juniper is 

 indigenous in the Cotswold hills, this is the only hillside I know of in the county 

 where it is abundant, and as the trees have not perceptibly increased in size during 

 the last fifty years, they must be of great age. The largest are 20 to 25 ft. high, but 

 none have developed a single stem thicker than 6 to 9 in. in diameter, and though 

 they produce berries freely, natural reproduction is entirely prevented by rabbits. 

 In young plantations, however, protected by wire-netting, not far away, there are 

 seedlings in the grass, which have grown from seeds dropped by birds. On many of 

 the chalk-hills of the Chilterns, the South Downs, and in Surrey and Hants, scattered 



1 In Kaisten and Schenck, VegetcUionsbilder, v. tt. 5, 6 a and b (1908). 

 » Mitt. Deut. Dend. Ges. 1910, p. 47. s Silva, 136 (1679). 



