Naturalist Spotlight: Juniper
- IPWA
- 8 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Rob Pudim
When is a plant berry not a berry? Here’s a hint…
Most evergreens in the James Peak Wilderness (JPW) and Indian Peaks Wilderness (IPW) areas have needles and pine cones. However, there are two evergreen plants that have evolved to have a very special cone.
They are the Rocky Mountain Juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) and the Common Juniper (Juniperus communis altissima). Both junipers have dark blue berries and twigs and leaves that look scaley or braided.
Botanists say it isn't a berry but a primitive cone. If they say so, but to me if it is round, blue, juicy berry with seeds inside, not a pine cone. The interesting thing about the berry/cone seed is it has a hard wax coating and will not germinate unless it passes through a bird's or a mammal's digestive tract.
Rocky Mountain Juniper
The Rocky Mountain Juniper is a small tree about 10 feet tall with bluish-purple berries usually with two seeds and is found at lower elevations in the James Peak and Indian Peaks Wilderness areas.
Juniper has a commensal relationship (a biological relationship where one organism benefits while the other is neither helped nor harmed) with the Townsend's Solitaire Thrush (Myadestes townsendi) similar to the nutcracker-pine interdependency.
In the fall, a solitaire will choose an area of juniper to defend from other birds and animals so it can eat juniper berries for breakfast, lunch and dinner all winter. The bird gets the food and the plants get their seeds spread.
Common Juniper
Most people looking at the Common Juniper would say it is a "ground pine". It can grow in mats or clumps under the other evergreens and is seldom higher than 10 centimeters tall. Although it looks like a pine with short needles in whorls of three, it has dark blue berries cones and can be found in both forest and alpine ecosystems. As a matter of fact, it can be found everywhere in the northern hemisphere.
Native Americans had many uses for juniper berries including for medicinal purposes such as to treat lung disease and skin irritations. The Navajo were known to burn juniper to make "good luck" hunting smoke and the Dakota (Sioux) and the Kutanai burned the needles to ward off illness and to protect them from witches, thunder and lightning.
To explore specific tribes and their varying relationships with the plant, you can read more on the Native Memory Project or explore the National Park Service Rocky Mountain Juniper article.
In the Middle Ages, as black pepper became prohibitively expensive, the French used crushed juniper berries as a cheap, peppery, and piney substitute to season heavy, wild game and rich meats. The French are also known for using juniper berries to flavor gin (from the French 'genivre": juniper) and in Baltic countries they flavor beer (source: Chef At Hand, Smithsonian Magazine).
In more recent years, using juniper berries in cooking and to flavor adult beverages has caught on widely in the US and curious palettes can now find the taste of juniper in American restaurants, beverage stores, breweries and bars. Nevertheless, the berries should not be eaten by people with kidney problems or pregnant women.
Birds, rodents, elk and deer use the berries as an important food source. I saw Bighorns also eating them once. Deer mice sometimes set up their burrows in the middle of a mat of Juniper. Over time the center of the mat will die, leaving a donut shaped Juniper.
What I like about junipers is they can live for 200 to 300 years. The Jardine Juniper: situated on the Jardine Juniper Trail in Logan Canyon, Utah, is the oldest known Rocky Mountain Juniper, estimated to be around 1,500 years old. Who would have thought...
Naturalist column exploring high country flora, fauna and geography
IPWA volunteers are often asked by visitors not just about the trails, but about what they are seeing in the Indian Peaks and James Peak Wilderness Areas. This column will cover some of the plants, animals and geographic features that hikers, anglers and backpackers may come across in these areas.
About Rob Pudim
A long time Boulder resident, Rob describes himself as “a coal-miner's son from Pennsylvania, a "fallen" scientist (Chemistry, Rutgers University and Microbiology, Tulane University) an editorial cartoonist, an amateur lepidopterist, a Native Plant Master, and a long-time birder”. His affiliation with IPWA goes back to its founding in the 1980s.
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