Rocky Mountain Juniper

Rocky Mountain Juniper

Cupressaceae (Cypress Family)

Rocky Mountain juniper.  Appressed leaves.

Quick ID
Rocky Mountain juniper is a small conical tree that grows to be around 30' high.  The bark is raggedy and shredding, reddish-brown to gray.  Its leaves are actually made up of thousands of tiny little needles, about 2 mm long.  If you look close, you'll see that some of these needles stick out all over the stem like a Doug Fir.  These are the juvenile leaves.  Mature leaves are squashed up flat against each other (known in the botany world as appressed), layered like shingles on a roof.

Common juniper.  Nothing appressed about these leaves.

There are three other species of juniper native to Montana.  Common juniper (J. communis) is a small shrub that's easy to recognize.  Its needles aren't apressed; they go poking out all around the stem in whorls of three, and have distinctly white undersides.
Creeping juniper (J. horizontalis) has leaves much like the Rocky Mountain juniper, but it grows in dense mats, never more than 2' tall.  The leaves are usually a dark green, whereas J. scopulorum tends to be more blueish-gray.  And finally, the Utah juniper (J. osteosperma) is another 30' tree.  Everything about it somehow seems more blunt: broader needles, a squarish crown, and a generally more squat appearance.  In Montana, you'll only find it in Big Horn and Carbon counties, south of the Pryor mountains, where it's at the northern edge of its range.

~Western Red Cedar~

You might confuse juniper with the western red cedar (Thuja plicata) in northwest Montana.  The leaves are similar, but the branches are more flattened, spray-like and brighter green.  The cones are also woody, whereas juniper bears seeds in what look like blue berries (they're technically female cones).  Juniper "berries" form in May or June and take two years to mature; you'll find green immature berries all over the branches along with the blue ones, which are usually covered with a white bloom.  If you're looking to harvest the berries, remember that, unlike most trees, junipers are dioecious (from the latin for "two houses"), meaning that individual plants are either male or female.  

"Male Bark"

Only the female plants have berries; the male ("staminate") cones just look like little brown nubs at the tips of branches, which scatter pollen to the wind.  Female trees also tend to have shreddier bark, as opposed to the patchier bark on males.

What's in a Name?

The species name of Rocky Mountain juniper, scopulorum, comes from the Latin 'scopul'  meaning rocky crags or cliffs, which is just where you'll find these bristly trees on your botanical field excursions.The origin of the common name juniper (and genus Juniperus) is shaky.  I've been combing through a lot of suggestions this morning, some silly and some sensible, and I'm not sure who to believe.  I do love the salty old etymologist Bill Casselman's take on the topic as a whole, and found this article pretty enlightening.Juniper is also becoming a popular baby name.  Ultimately, the given name is probably not derived so much from the plant as from the Welsh name Guinevere (which also gave rise to the name Jennifer).

Gorgeous juniper habitat on the Madison river

Range

Look for Rocky Mountain Juniper in dry, rocky foothills and montane regions from BC and Alberta south to New Mexico and east to the Dakotas.  The range is extended somewhat due to the fact J. scopulorum hybridizes regularly with other juniper species and horticulturally cultivated varieties. 

Tidbits

Junipers, along with other members of the cypress family, have been around for a looooong long time.  Ever since the earth's land masses were clumped together in the super-continent  Pangaea, 250 million years ago.  This is why you can find the very same species, Juniperus communis, as a native shrub in North America, Asia and Europe.  This ancient plant, as you might expect, has a rich and fascinating history.Juniper's light, durable wood is naturally streaked with a lovely red and white grain, and makes fine tools and decorative utensils.  The shredded bark has been used in rope-making and padding for diapers.  The dried berries can be dried and strung into necklaces; Navajo mothers are said to have given these "ghost beads" to their babies to prevent bad dreams.

The berries and aromatic branches of the juniper have also been used medicinally since ancient times (the Greek physician Galen mentions it as early as the second century AD), for a list of ailments too long to go into here.  The essential oil does contain the diuretic compound terpinen-4-ol, as well as Amentoflavone, which has antiviral properties.  Juniper berry tea has a long, complicated, sometimes dangerous association with child-bearing.  It was used by Shoshone women as a contraceptive, and Zuni and Apache women drank the tea to promote muscle relaxation during labor.  Juniper oil does increase uterine contractions, and many native tribes (and pioneer women) used it to induce abortions, sometimes with fatal results.The berries are not particularly edible on their own, but they do lend their distinct flavor to that most delightful spirit, gin.  The earliest juniper-flavored alcohols were medicinal concoctions,  and would have borne little resemblance to our modern take on gin.  The species most often used in gin production today is the long lived Juniperus communis communis.

Camped out at my favorite (top secret) juniper picking spot

For the most part the berries (a thousand tons a year or more!) are still wild-harvested, coming principally from Tuscany, Morocco and eastern Europe.  Hand picking is long, laborious work because remember, there are berries in all stages of ripeness on each branch.  To only pick off the dark blue berries and leave the green fruit alone requires a lot of elbow grease and some skill with a good whacking stick. Once harvested, the berries are infused into a neutral base spirit (vodka) and violá!  Oh Captain, my Captain.  Distillers can be a little secretive about their recipes, but common additions often include angelica, orris root (a type of iris that acts as a fixative for other flavors), cardamom, bay leaf, citrus, ginger, grains of paradise (in the ginger family Zingiberaceae), lavender, coriander, fennel and cubeb (similar to black pepper). 

Hogarth's Gin Lane

We could go on and on about the history of gin.  It's production as "medicine" during prohibition.  England's 18th century Gin Craze.  The fascinating story of quinine.  Jenever, Old Tom and London Dry.  Bathtub gin.  So on and so forth.  If you'd like to read more, and in fact discover a whole incredible world of botanicals as they relate to alcohol, please do pick up a copy of Amy Stewart's The Drunken Botanist.  You'll be glad you did.

Wild Gardening

The Garnet Range is a great place to see giant J. scopulorum

The Rocky Mountain juniper is one of our toughest little trees, and is a perfect choice for natural gardens.  The tiers of branches, loosely woven, call the eye upward and beyond the borders, providing structure and texture in every season. Waxy-coated leaves make it incredibly drought resistant and winter hardy.  Junipers want full sun or part shade, and very little water.  If you are going to irrigate, mke sure the soil is really well drained.  Although very slow-growing, give it enough space to accommodate its mature size (about 20-30' high with an eight foot spread).

Try propagating juniper by taking heel cuttings after a couple of hard freezes, and using a rooting hormone.  If you want to try growing it from seed, sow them in the fall and cross your fingers.  It's possible, but expect your germination to be pretty low.  Plants are also readily available at nurseries, but ask questions to be certain you're getting the true native species.  There are a ton of Juniperus cultivars and ornamental varieties.  There might be nothing wrong with that per se, but as a general practice, the more your garden plants resemble the native species found in your area, the better they'll be at providing food, shelter and nesting sites for your local insects and other wildlife.

Juniper berries are relished in fall and winter by many small birds, especially waxwings and grosbeaks.  Junipers are larval host plants for the Juniper Hairstreak butterfly (Callophrys gryneus).  Watch for males perching amidst the branches on your next summer excursion.

Columbine

Columbine
Aquilegia sp.
Ranunculaceae (Buttercup Family)

Quick ID

Ternately divided leaves

Columbines are upright, rather delicate looking plants with basal leaves generally around 6" tall, and flowering stalks that can reach 2 1/2'.  The fruits are a distinctive follicle of five slender pods with extended pointy tips, clustered together and splitting open to release rather large black seeds.  Leaves are usually two times divided into threes (making nine leaflets per leaf), and mostly clustered at the base of the plant.  The flower stalk sports a few smaller leaves; for the most part they're fairly insignificant.

Pod-like fruits

The flowers, however, are unmistakable. Five colorful sepals encircle five (usually) lighter colored petals whose bases sweep back into knobby spurs.  Colorado columbine (A. coerulea) has light purpley-blue sepals, with straight spurs twice as long as the petals.  Another species  common in Montana, yellow columbine (A. flavescens) has lemony yellow sepals that sometimes run towards pink,  and the spurs are much squatter and more curled in.  Both have a waggly tuft of stamens and styles poking down from the center of the blossom.

Meadowrue - same leaves, different flower

Aquilegia leaves can be easily mistaken for another Ranunculaceae member, the meadowrue (Thalictrum sp.) that grows in similar spaces.  Once they're blooming it's easy to tell them apart; Thalictrum has inconspicuous flowers that can't compare to columbine's showy blossoms.
There are many species of Aquilegia in the US (five in Montana), with lots of varieties within themselves, and the species have a tendency to hybridize with each other as well.  That being said, color is not always a great way to tell species apart.  The morphology of the spurs and where the plant is found growing can provide better clues. 

Range
Look for columbines in moist meadows and forests.  In Montana, A. coerulea has a smaller, more southerly range (extending from the lower quarter of the state and down to New Mexico) and prefers shadier sites.  A. flavescens can take more sun, and is pretty widespread in high elevations throughout western and central MT, on down to Utah and Colorado.

The pink sepals hint that this may be a hybrid of A. flavescens and A. formosa  (red columbine), a less common species that grows at lower elevations.  This photo was taken at Pine Creek in the Paradise Valley.

What's in a Name?
This plant is totally named for its looks.  Aquilegia probably comes from the Latin aquila, "eagle," for the spurs that look like talons.  Other sources claim the genus is derived from aqua (water) and lego (to collect), for the spurs' resemblance to ancient water urns.  The species name coerulea is quite common in the plant world, and means blue, while flavescens (and its equally common root flavens) means yellow.  The name "columbine" itself comes from the Latin word for dove, columba.  People say the flower looks like five little doves sipping from a water bowl together, tails poking towards the sky.

Tidbits
Columbines are pollinated by hummingbirds and hawk moths, who can reach deep into the flower to get at the nectar.  I've also seen plenty of bumblebees in my garden burrowing down into the tubes.  Growing up in Minnesota, red columbines (probably A. canadensis) were common, but we always knew them as "honeysuckles."  Indeed, it was my favorite thing as a wee one in the woods, to bite off the sweet little nectar-filled spur tips of these flowers.  Of course now I know that, like all these Ranunculaceae characters, Aquilegia can be pretty poisonous.  Eating a large enough quantity of the seeds, especially, can be dangerous and even fatal.  These toxic little seeds have been used in the past as a parasiticide to treat lice infestations as well.  Beautiful and deadly...

Wild Gardening

A. coerulea fitting into a shady woodland garden nicely, along with alumroot (Heuchera cylindrica), hosta, bleeding heart and bedstraw (Galium odoratum)

According to Lone Pine's totally awesome new Alpine Plants of the Northwest field guide, yellow columbines are Montana gardener's number one favorite native perennial herb.  And for good reason.  Most of us are forever on the lookout for an easy-to-grow plant with gorgeous blooms that does well in shady spaces.  These perennials are tolerant and adaptive, very easy to start from seed, and bloom in the thick of summer, late June to August.  I've noticed mine spreading over the years, filling in their shady nook, but not to the point of being obnoxious.  I've also noticed that, as the flowers start to fade, their almost always seems to be a collection of aphids gathered on the developing fruits.  This has never caused any problems in my garden whatsoever, but it does tend to make the protruding flower stalks look a little yucky.  At this point I usually snip those stalks off at the base, and enjoy the pretty foliage for the rest of the season.

So you want to build a Pollinator Hotel...

Well you can!  And you should.  Pollinator Hotels provide essential habitat for cavity-nesting insects like mason bees and leafcutters, as well as other beneficial critters like spiders, ladybugs, and butterflies.  You'll get to watch this mini-ecosystem unfold in your backyard, observing first hand its life cycles, food chains and day to day goings-on.  Your hotel can be tidy and symmetrical, or thrown together with wild abandon.  You can build them to suit your fancy, changing features and adding on over the years.  And with a little ingenuity and a bit of time spent gathering materials, they're inexpensive and easy to put together.

I build these wild bee houses using salvaged fenceboards and shingles, blue-stain lumber milled from trees killed by bark beetles, and whatever else scraps I can find.  (If you want to buy one, here's my Etsy Shop!)
You can also expand on this idea and install a Pollinator Hotel on-site.  We did this recently as part of the Homestead Hey Day spring celebration at the historic Moon-Randolph Homestead in Missoula.  Volunteers pooled their craftsmanship and creativity, using scrap wood from around the ranch, locally gathered natural materials and hand tools to build a beautiful and functional house for helpful bugs.  We've still got some finishing touches to do, drilling holes in the logs and stuffing crevices with bee tubes, but for one happy afternoon's work, it turned out pretty incredible.  
If you want to build your own you'll want to follow just a few basic guidelines.  Here are some tips to help you get started.

1.  Build a frame
Anything goes, pretty much!  You might want to sketch out a plan before you begin.  How big?  Do you want formal rows of tubes and drilled holes, or rustic compartments of natural materials?  Will it be built on posts, or hanging?  Do you want to stack materials so the hotel can be dismantled and rebuilt easily, or do you want a frame that's held in place by screws...or cement, or...?  Do you want to include spaces to put soil and grow live plants on the structure?  If so, you might want to put them down low so you can water without drenching your insect nesting materials.

Whatever you decide, remember that native bees need one end of their nesting cavity closed.  If you're using completely hollow tubes, you'll want to put a backboard of some sort up.  If you're drilling holes through logs, you can opt to not drill all the way through (for example, drill a 6" deep hole in a 7" deep log).  I personally recommend drilling all the way through and putting up a backboard, however.  That way if you ever decide to clean out your bee holes, it's much easier.


2. Put it in the right place
You'll want to locate your Pollinator Hotel in a place that's at least somewhat shielded from heavy wind and rain.  Face the opening to the south or east so it gets plenty of warm morning sun.  If you live in a really hot sunny location, some afternoon shade in midsummer is helpful too.  Raising the frame off the ground a few feet deters ants, who have been known to sneak in and steal the pollen reserves left for developing larvae.  Just don't put it so high that it's out of insects' normal flight paths.  Somewhere between 4-8' off the ground is ideal.  And make sure the insects have access to a source of food (pollen from trees, shrubs, flowers or vegetables within a couple hundred yards), water and mud, which mason bees use to line their brood cells.  We located ours at the edge of the vegetable garden, facing out towards an ancient orchard.  The early spring flowers of fruit trees are perfect for mason bees (also known as blue orchard bees).  Remember that, once you start to fill in your frame, it will get heavy, so you might want to get it in place beforehand.

3.  Provide nooks and crannies
The idea is to mimic the natural nesting sites of insects in the wild.  This helps mitigate the effects of habitat destruction as native ecosystems give way to concrete, asphalt and (gasp!) turf grass.  So build one for environmental stewardship and conservation!  But also do it for yourself.  Attracting a diverse array of native insects to your yard and garden leads to a healthier ecological balance (thus reducing insect pests), better pollination of your fruits, flowers and veggies, and an awesome opportunity to observe these fascinating creatures up close.
Try to provide a diversity of cracks and crevices to accommodate different nesting habits.  Ladybugs, beetles, lacewings, beneficial spiders, moths and butterflies all seek shelter to raise their young and overwinter, and many native bee species nest in hollow tubes and cavities.  Use different sized sticks, dead flower stalks (sunflowers work great), straw, pine cones, dry grasses and pieces of bark to fill compartments.  Avoid wood that's been treated or recently varnished.

Things are starting to take shape!  Peter cuts plant stalks into tubes, Tyson saws logs, and Natasha slices bark rings to build compartments.

4.  Make the bee holes the right size and depth

Mason bee cells in a milkweed stem

Tubes and drilled holes should be about 6" deep.  This is important.  Nesting mason bees will fill the first ~4" with female eggs, and cap each tube with a couple males.  The eggs hatch into larvae, which pupate into adult bees at the end or the summer.  The males emerge first (presumably to be offered up to any predators lurking outside the nest) followed by the females a couple weeks later.  If your tubes are too short, you risk having all female eggs.  Cavity nesting bees also avoid holes that are too deep, so try not to go over 8" or so.

There are thousands of species of wild bees...all different sizes and with varying preferences.  When drilling holes or cutting tubes, the standard recommended diameter is 3/8".  I've seen bees nest in holes down to 1/8" and as big as 5/8".  I try to provide a variety of sizes, to see what different species I can attract.

Gathering tubes

Finding hollow-stemmed plant materials can be tough.  If you live in an area with bamboo, that works perfect.  I try to use the previous year's dry stalks of Japanese knotweed (an abundant noxious weed), Fuller's teasel (a pain to process, with all the prickles), Queen Anne's lace, milkweed, elderberry, even corn stalks.  Remember that many species have nodes that go all the way through the stem, so these parts need to be cut out or placed towards the back of your hotel.

5.  Protect it
Besides choosing a sheltered location, it helps to put some sort of slanted roof on so rain rolls off.  And if you're worried about birds, squirrels or deer getting into your nesting materials, put some small-gauge chicken wire over the front entrance.

6.  Maintain it over time
If you're using straw, dry grass or other decomposables, clean out the compartment and replace with fresh materials each spring.  In the case of bee cavities, mites and other pests can build up if the tubes aren't cleaned out periodically.  Once every four years or so you'll want to scrape out debris with a poker or replace the tubes entirely.  Some people recommend spraying the holes with a 5-10% bleach solution to kill mites.
Keep an eye on your Pollinator Hotel.  Over time, you'll have an idea of who lives where, what the most popular rooms are, and how well each material and arrangement is working.  Experiment!  Change it up.  Have fun.

If you want to learn more about native pollinators, visit my Wild House of Bees page.  Also check out this excellent compilation of insect habitats from Inspiration Green to see what people around the world are building.  And please, post pictures of what you come up with!