Thursday, October 22, 2009

Ashe Juniper

Aka: Mountain Cedar, Rock Cedar, Post Cedar, Mexican Juniper, Break Cedar, Texas Cedar, or Sabino. It's amazing how many names one plant can gather. It looks a lot like a Eastern Redcedar, but the splitting of the trunk and overall shape are what made up my mind.
Ashe Junipers are flatter and generally have branching low to the ground and so appear to multiple trunks, but Red Cedars are taller and thinner with a singular trunk.
They usually grow between 15 and 30 feet, sometimes getting all the way to a whopping 45 feet. The bark is reddish and flaky, peeling off in long strands, and the trunk looks twisted.
The leaves are dark green, saw toothed, scaly, and well... junipery. I'm not sure how else to describe them, but just remember what this one looks like because that's what they all look like.
Since Junipers are conifers, it has cones. Like the cypress, though, it's cones don't look anything like pine cones. They look like little blue berries 1/4 - 1/3 inch long, they have a sweet smell and ripen in one year (not two like the Red Cedar).
Oddly, it's generally considered an invasive weed even in it's natural range, this is because of their shallow root systems that draws water away from other plants like grasses.

There's something about them that can give people awful allergies during the winter, so that's definitely something to watch out for.

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