Description
Juniperus virginiana
CT DR EcoR
Soil: Variable, but Well-drained
Moisture: Dry to Moist
Light: Full to Part Sun
Plant Height: 30 to 50 feet
Plant Width: 8 to 25 feet
Pests: None
Landscape Value: Makes a great landscape specimen. Excellent as a screen or windbreak.
Dense, long-lived evergreen tree with a broadly pyramidal, or sometimes columnar shape. Trunks are often fluted at base. Gray to reddish-brown bark exfoliates in thin, shreddy strips on mature trees. Fragrant, scale-like foliage varies in color from gray-green to blue-green or dark green, with all colors turning brown-green in winter. Trees are either male or female with females producing round, blackish-green berry-like cones with a waxy coating. “Berries” are highly attractive to numerous birds and small mammals, especially Cedar Waxwings, named for this tree. Foliage provides nesting and roosting sites for various songbirds. Avoid planting near apple trees, as cedar is an alternate host for the cedar-apple rust, a fungal disease that can be injurious to apple trees. Tolerates heat, cold, wind, drought, shallow-rocky soil, salt, deer, and black walnut. The reddish-brown heartwood is aromatic, rot-resistant, and repels moths, thus its use as fence posts and lining for chests and closets. Contact with foliage or wood can produce mild to severe skin rashes in some individuals.
2 gallon pot, 12-18 inches tall
Photo credits:
Louisiana State University
Missouri Botanical Garden
