The Common Juniper (Juniperus communis).



This is an evergreen shrub of variable appearance: tall spreading or low spreading.
On plains it appears as a tree reaching a height of 5-6 metres, whereas in the mountains it takes the form of a bush but at higher altitudes and particularly windy areas it is often a low spreading shrub.
The plant has a resinous smell.
The cartaceous bark is dark grey, smooth at first then in 10 year old branches it desquamates into longitudinal fibres with wavy edges.
The stems are twisted and ramified; the boughs are yellow or green when young and brown and more rigid with the passing of time.
The Juniper has needle-like pointed and prickly leaves in whorls of three. The sessiles are grey-green and white in colour. The inner surface is virtually flat and is marked by a single white stomatal band.
The Juniper is dioecious with male and female cones on separate plants: the male cones are yellow and the female ones are small and green gathered in small clusters at the leafs axel.
There is nothing noteworthy about their appearance.
Its fruits, called berries are in fact pseudoberries which are green the first year and become a purple-black colour only in the second year of life, when they reach maturation. They are covered in a waxy opaque substance (produced by superficial cells of the fruit’s epidermis), and at the top there is a star-shaped slit. They contain three semi-hard triangular light-brown seeds.
The Juniper is to be found on uncultivated soil, from the coast to the mountain and adapts easily to dry and inhospitable ground being unaffected by the nature of the soil and for this reason it has proved useful in the process of consolidating unstable detritus and slopes.
It is extremely resistant to low temperatures and can withstand aridity and strong winds from 0 to 1,500 m. and sometimes even stronger