Juniper

The Common Juniper is a small evergreen tree. It is sometimes called ‘Mountain Yew’, because it is a bit like a Yew tree, and because it is well suited to mountainous regions. The older Gaelic name ‘Samh’ is seen in a number of place-names, such as the little island of Samhan near the Isle of Mull, and the common Gaelic ‘Aiteann’ is more rarely used as a place-name. Some place-names with the Gaelic word for Yew – ‘iubhar’ – might be referring to the ‘Mountain Yew’. There are some regional variations of type, with subtle differences between the squat Junipers of the Border hills,the up-reaching Junipers of the Pine and Birch woods of the Central and North-Eastern Highlands and the ground-hugging Junipers of the peninsulas and islands of the South-West Highlands – though in all areas, and even close together, there are many weird and wonderful shapes. Among the old Scots Pines of the North-east and Central Highlands, where the Junipers are numerous – and where it is the Clan badge of Ross and Murray - there are dense crouching bushes, alongside tall dark turrets and pinnacles up to five metres high. The foliage of tiny needles is dark and sharp, though lighter and softer when new, and on one side of each little needle there is a white streak. It can regenerate by layering, when the spreading branches bury themselves in the heathery ground and take root but otherwise spreads by seed. The fruit takes two seasons to ripen, from tiny yellow flowers on the female tree pollinated by the pale male flowers - to hard little green fruits, slightly seemed and oval, to dark fully-ripe berries, brownish black . These berries – ‘dearc’, or ‘samhin’, in Gaelic - have been used medicinally for a very long time, for treatment of eye problems, stomach complaints, and epilepsy, though they have to be carefully processed and applied, in ways now largely forgotten. Some of the value of the berries seems to have been partly magic, connected to Priests and Wise-women. The curing of eye ailments reflects the belief that the ritual use of the berries and other parts of the tree could ward off evil spells – the so-called Evil-eye – especially at Halloween, the Gaelic ‘Samhain’. Under the smoky green mass of spiky foliage the twisting trunk and limbs are pale rusty orange, smooth but peeling.