Genus Juniperus, L. (Red Cedar)

Leaves - simple; indeterminate in position because of their smallness and closeness. They are arranged in four rows up and down the branchlets. In younger or rapidly growing sprouts the leaves are awl-shaped or needle-shaped, somewhat spreading from the branch, very sharp and stiff, placed in pairs (or sometimes in threes), usually about one fourth of an inch long, and with the fine branchlets, which they cover, rounded. In the older and slower-growing trees the leaves are scale-like and overlapping, egg-shape, closely pressed to the branchlets which they cover, and with the branchlets square. As the branchlets grow, the lower scales sometimes lengthen and become dry and chaffy and slightly spreading. Bark - brown and sometimes purplish-tinged, often shredding off with age and leaving the trunk smooth and polished. Berries - about the size of a small pea, closely placed along the branchlets, bluish, and covered with a whitish powder. Found - in Southern Canada, and distributed nearly throughout the United States - more widely than any other of the cone-bearing trees. General information - An evergreen tree, fifteen to thirty feet high (much larger at the South), usually pyramid-shaped, with a rounded base, but varying very greatly, especially near the coast, where it is often twisted and flattened into angular and weird forms. The wood is very valuable, light, straight-grained, durable, fragrant. It is largely used for posts, for cabinet-work, for interior finish, and almost exclusively in the making of lead pencils. The heart-wood is usually a dull red (whence the name), the sap-wood white.  Among the most picturesque objects in the Turkish landscape, standing like sentinels, singly or in groups, and slender and upright as a Lombardy Poplar, are the black cypress trees (C. sempervirens). They mark the sites of graves, often of those which have long since disappeared. In America, more than any other northern tree, the red cedar gives the same sombre effect, whether growing wild or planted in cemeteries. The Common Juniper (J. communis, L.), common as a shrub, is occasionally found in tree form, low, with spreading or drooping branches, and with leaves resembling those of a young Red Cedar, awl-shaped and spreading, but arranged in threes instead of opposite.

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