Photo: © Biodôme de Montréal
This shrubby, sprawling coniferous shrub grows 25 cm to 1.5 m tall. It forms greyish-green bushes that often spread to cover an area of several square metres. Its bark turns dark brown with age. Its stems are more or less horizontal and highly ramified. Its branches, with their down-turned ends, sprout out in every direction. The leaf is a fine, sharp-tipped evergreen needle, arranged in whorls of 3. The underside of the needle is white, edged in green. The flowers are arranged in male catkins and female seed cones. They are abundant, stalkless, solitary and borne in the axils of the previous year's leaves. The small male catkins are made up of pale yellow flowers with small brownish pollen sacs at their base. The tiny female seed cones are greyish-green. The fruit is a round berry, with lines on the top resembling a steering wheel. It is blue-black and covered with a pale blue waxy coating. Its granular green flesh turns brown with age and contains 1 to 3 brown seeds with translucent tubercles.
The male catkins and the female seed cones are borne on different trees in this species. The catkins produce large quantities of yellow pollen that rises from a male shrub in a cloud if the branches are shaken when the flowers are mature. Common juniper flowers in spring. The fruit ripens in the third autumn after the plant flowers.
Habitat, distribution
Common juniper thrives on dry, open sites, mainly on sand dunes, cliffs and exposed rocks. It is more common along coastlines, but is also found inland. It also grows on gravel and shale slopes, in semi-abandoned pastures and in some bogs. It seems to prefer the tundra forest and open coniferous forest climate. It is distributed throughout Québec.
Along with black crowberry, bearberry, creeping juniper and a few other shrubs of the same type, common juniper forms barrens, for instance on fixed sand dunes, on gravel beaches and even on organic soils (peat). It frequents some forests, including those dominated by black spruce and lichen. The spreading variety of this species, found in Québec, has branches that take root when the central part of the plant dies, leaving a ring of rooted branches known as a fairy ring. Its aromatic leaves stay on the tree for 3 years, turning bronze in winter. Its fruit takes 3 years to ripen and is then shed 1 or 2 years later if it has not been eaten by birds. Birds help to disperse the seeds, which germinate better after passing through their digestive tracts. Common juniper is the most northern of all conifers and the only one to grow in Greenland. It is also the most widely distributed and the only conifer to grow in both Canada and Europe. Our spreading variety is different from the European tree, however, which can grow to 8 m tall.
Uses and effects
The word 'gin' comes from the name of this plant. Its fruit is one of the main flavouring ingredients for this liquor. In 1550, a Dutch apothecary came up with 'genever', a blend of spirits and juniper berries, to treat backache and sore muscles. Distilled in England since the late 17th century, genever became known as gin. Today, it is flavoured either directly with fresh or dried berries or with an alcohol extract. Native peoples used the bark as a plaster on wounds and in basket-making. Both the inner bark and the fruit can be eaten as subsistence food or dried and ground into flour. Some people have roasted them to make a sort of coffee. A decoction of juniper branches or leaves was drunk as a astringent tea or herbal tea to relax muscles after childbirth. The dried berries have been used as condiment since Babylonian times (c. 1700-500 B.C.) and have a delicate, slightly resinous flavour that disappears when they are cooked. They may be used in cooking to flavour sauerkraut, cabbage, pickles, dried beans and other legumes. There are also used in stuffings for game or other meat to impart a game-like flavour. In France, a beer called genevrette was made at one time from barley and common juniper.
Genévrier commun, genièvre