Juniper berry

“ Although an incredible number of those trees is cut down daily, there is still a greater number standing, in the United States; and millions of bushels of berries are lost every year, while only skilful hands are wanted, to make them useful to mankind. The juniper berry has many medical properties: it is a delightful aromatic, and contains an oil essential, and a sweet extract, which by the fermentation yields a vinous liquor, made into a sort of wine in some countries; that is called wine for the poor: it strengthens the stomach, when debilitated by bad food or too hard labor. ”

“ The northern red currant, Ribes rubrum Linn., and the black currant, Ribes hudsonianum Richardson, are species of wide distribution in the north.
[233] Apparently Hearne refers to Juniperus nana Willd., the dwarf juniper, since Richardson gives the same Indian name as applied by the Crees to this shrub. Granting this, Hearne's creeping pine is Juniperus sabina Linn., shrubby red cedar. Both species extend northward to the tree-limit.
[CP] The Indians call the Juniper-berry Caw-caw-cue-minick, or the Crowberry. ”

“ The leaves grow in threes; each is tipped with a spine, and is longer than the ripe fruit, which is a blackish purple berry.
Juniper berries are at first green; and they continue upon the trees two years before they become ripe and assume their purple colour. When ripe they have a sweetish aromatic taste. The Swedes prepare, from these berries, a beverage which they consider useful as a medicine; and in some parts of the Continent juniper berries are roasted, ground, and adopted as a substitute for coffee. In Sweden they are eaten at breakfast, in the form of a conserve ”

“ The shrubby plants that reach the sea-coast are the common juniper, two species of willow, the dwarf-birch, the common alder, the hippophaë, a gooseberry, the red bear berry (arbutus uva ursi) , the Labrador tea-plant, the Lapland rose, the bog-whortleberry, and the crowberry. The kidney-leaved oxyria grows in great abundance there, and occasionally furnished us with an agreeable addition to our meals, as it resembles the garden-sorrel in flavour, but is more juicy and tender. ”

“ The leaves, when young, are scale-like; but when older they become loose and feathery, so that there are two kinds of leaves on the same tree. The male and female flowers are very small, and the berry is only two-seeded. The sap-wood of this tree is quite white, but the heart-wood is red, and it is used occasionally for making black-lead pencils, particularly those of the commoner kinds, though the Bermuda Juniper is preferred for the superior ones. This last species (J. bermudiana) is rather tender in England, and it is seldom grown in this country. ”

“ There are several spurious kinds of berries, whose pulp is not properly a part of the fruit, but originates from some other organ. Thus, in the Mulberry, as well as the Strawberry Spinach, Blitum, Curt. Mag. t., the Calyx after flowering becomes coloured and very juicy, investing the seed, like a genuine berry. The Corolla of Commelina Zanonia undergoes a similar change, forming a black very juicy coat to the capsule, being totally altered both in shape and substance from its appearance in the flower. In the Juniper, Engl. ”

“ They likewise weave the bark into pokes and pouches for storing and carrying their dried meat and mesquite beans. The juniper berries are an article of diet and commerce with the Indians, who mix them with divers ingredients, pulp them in stone mortars, and bake them in cakes which become the greatest delicacy on their bill of fare. White men, when driven to it by starvation, have sustained life by making food of the berries. A small quantity of one-seed juniper reaches woodworkers in Texas. The lumber is short and rough. The numerous knots are generally much darker than the body of the wood. ”

“ Juniper-berries are a roundish Fruit, of the Size of a Pea. They wither and wrinkle in the drying, and we meet with them variously corrugated, and usually covered with a bluish resinous Dust when fresh. They should be chosen fresh, plump, full of Pulp, and of a strong Taste and Smell. They are usually imported from Germany, tho’ we have plenty of the Trees in England. It is but small with us, rarely rising to more than three or four Feet in Height, and scarce ever exceeding five or six. Some of the Juniper Shrubs are Males, some Females of the same Species ”

“ But it is a common practice to adopt spirit of turpentine (246) instead of this. Juniper-berries are imported into this country from Holland and Italy. Their smell is strong, but not disagreeable; and their flavour is warm, pungent, and sweetish, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth. The essential oil of these berries, if mixed with nut-oil (241) , makes an excellent varnish for pictures, woodwork, and iron.
The wood of the juniper-tree is of reddish colour, very hard, and so durable that it will last more than a hundred years without decay. ”

“ But the Juniper, with all its imperfections, its rugged form, and its inferior verdure, is not to be contemned; and it possesses certain qualities and features which ought to be prized hardly less than beauty. Its sombre ferruginous green adds variety to our wood-scenery at all times, and by contrast serves to make the foliage of other trees the more brilliant and conspicuous. In the latter part of summer, when the woods have acquired a general uniformity of verdure, the Junipers enliven the face of Nature by blending their duller tints with the fading hues of the fully ripened foliage. ”

“ This tree is of poor form and size for lumber. Trunks frequently divide into branches near the ground. The wood resembles that of other western junipers, and usually the fine color which distinguishes the red cedar of the East is wanting, and in its stead is a dull brown, tinged with red. The wood is soft and durable, and is strongly odorous. The sapwood is thin and is nearly white. Fuel and fence posts are the most important uses of the California juniper. Indians eat the berries raw or dry them and pound them to flour. ”

“ Crossing the glade again on my homeward way I plucked branches of juniper so thickly studded with blue berries that there seemed scarcely room for the scaly-pointed leaves, and in so doing I stumbled upon the real secret of the dainty odor left by the goddess and her train. For the matured shoots and leaves of the juniper give off a fragrance that is as much more dainty than that of the pitch pine as that is more dainty than the strongly resinous odor of the white pine when cut or bruised. ”

“ JUNIPER. The Juniper shrub (Arkenthos of the ancients) , which is widely distributed about the world, grows not uncommonly in England as a stiff evergreen conifer on heathy ground, and bears bluish purple berries. These have a sweet, juicy, and, presently, bitter, brown pulp, containing three seeds, and they do not ripen until the second year. The flowers blossom in May and June. Probably the shrub gets its name from the Celtic jeneprus, "rude or rough." Gerard notes that "it grows most commonly very low, like unto our ground furzes." Gum Sandarach, or Pounce, is the product of this tree. ”

“ In calm, sun-days the sugar pine preaches like an enthusiastic apostle without moving a leaf. On level rocks the juniper dies standing and wastes insensibly out of existence like granite, the wind exerting about as little control over it, alive or dead, as is does over a glacier boulder. ”

“ The Eastern red cedar is a handsome, narrow pyramid in its youth, often becoming broad and irregular, or [Pg 277] round-topped above a buttressed, twisted trunk, as it grows old. The scale-like leaves are four-ranked, blue-green when young, spreading, and sometimes three fourths of an inch long, on vigorous new shoots. The dark blue berries are covered with a pale bloom and have a resinous, sweet flesh. This juniper is familiar in abandoned farms and ragged fence-rows, becoming rusty brown in foliage to match the stringy red bark in winter time. ”

“ There is also made a pleasant and wholsome drink of the seeds, as they do of our common juniper; of which hereafter. Nearest the Bermuda juniper, comes the Virginia, both yet exceeded by that of Carolina, for the perfections already mention’d, speaking of cedar, not forgetting the Oxy-Cedrus, which is reputed a sort of juniper: The berries so abounding on our uncultivated bushes, and barren heaths, always pregnant, annually ripen, tho’ not all at a time; some sticking longer, so as there will be black, green, and gray, succeeding one another. ”

“ It also grows in Asia Minor, Persia, and at great elevations on the Himalayas. In Great Britain it is usually a shrub with spreading branches, less frequently a low tree. In former times the juniper seems to have been a very well-known plant, the name occurring almost unaltered in many languages. ”

“ Here and there, as the trunk or branch is increasing in girth, the silvery, lichen-clad, rough outer bark has parted, and shows the smooth, dark-red inner bark; the outer covering still clinging over the opening, and looking like grey ribands slightly interlaced. Many another kind of tree-stem is beautiful in its winter dress, but it is difficult to find any so full of varied beauty and interest as that of the Juniper; it is one of the yearly feasts that never fails to delight and satisfy. ”

“ Hard by the stone-heaps which I turn over for my collections there is a plentiful supply of brown-berried junipers. Pines are totally absent; and the cypress only appears occasionally near the houses. Moreover, among the vegetable remains which we shall see assisting in the protection of the nest, we often find the juniper's catkins and needles. As the resin-insect is economical of its time and does not fly far from the quarters familiar to it, the gum must have been collected on the shrub at whose foot the materials for the barricade have been gathered. ”

“ A long while ago, perhaps as much as two thousand years, there was a rich man who had a wife of whom he was very fond; but they had no children. Now in the garden before the house where they lived, there stood a juniper tree; and one winter's day as the lady was standing under the juniper tree, paring an apple, she cut her finger, and the drops of blood trickled down upon the snow. ”

“ Its leaves are evergreen, and the new leaves grow in small tufts at the tips of the branches, so that you scarcely notice them.
The Juniper bark is dark reddish brown, and it flakes off in small pieces in the same way as the Yew tree bark. The branches are small and thin, and they clothe the trunk close to the very ground; it would be difficult to sit comfortably under a Juniper tree in this country. Like the Yew, it is a very slow-growing tree.
Juniper leaves (2) are not in the least like ordinary leaves: they are more like thorns than leaves, and they are not easy to gather. ”

“ They are mighty waving golden-rods, ever in tune, singing and writing wind-music all their long century lives. Little, however, of this noble tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the strictly alpine portion of the forests. The burly Juniper whose girth sometimes more than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it grows. The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in wavering ripples, but the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding to wave even in the heaviest gales. They only shake in quick, short vibrations. ”

“ Ju"ni*per (?) , n. [L. juniperus, prop., youth-producing, and so called from its evergreen appearance, from the roots of E. juvenile, and parent. Cf. Gin the liquor.] (Bot.) Any evergreen shrub or tree, of the genus Juniperus and order Coniferæ.
The common juniper (J. communis) is a shrub of a low, spreading form, having awl-shaped, rigid leaves in whorls of threes, and bearing small purplish blue berries (or galbuli) , of a warm, pungent taste, used as diuretic and in flavoring gin. ”

“ Plucking ears of corn signifies the existence of secret enemies, and Mr. Folkard quotes an old authority which tells us that the juniper is potent in dreams. Thus, "it is unlucky to dream of the tree itself, especially if the person be sick; but to dream of gathering the berries, if it be in winter, denotes prosperity. To dream of the actual berries signifies that the dreamer will shortly arrive at great honours and become an important person. To the married it foretells the birth of a male child." ”

“ Then the juniper-tree began to stir itself, and the branches parted asunder, and moved together again, just as if some one was rejoicing and clapping his hands. At the same time a mist seemed to arise from the tree, and in the centre of this mist it burned like a fire, and a beautiful bird flew out of the fire singing magnificently, and he flew high up in the air, and when he was gone, the juniper-tree was just as it had been before, and the handkerchief with the bones was no longer there. Marlinchen, however, was as gay and happy as if her brother were still alive. ”

“ Shrubs, especially Currans, or Ribes are very frequent, but they regard not these because perhaps the tast is unpleasant, especially of those which bear Black-berries, which are more numerous than the others. The Junipers grow thick, being very tall and comely. This Country yields all manner of Berries, the chief are those which the Swedes call Hiortron, some Dew-berries, or the Norway Berry, whose species is the same that grows on Brambles, each Berry being divided as it were into graines of a pale yellow color, beginning to be red as they ripen. These commonly grow in marshy places. ”