Chinese Column Juniper... A Plant For Permanence

While the present vogue of yews for house front plantings is an improvement over

the earlier "chess formation period" of golden chamaecy paris, peaky arborvitae and such, it has brought about a marked degree of monotony. This is not so much a matter of their color - which runs to good deep greens - as it is of the limited diversity of growth-forms among them. The shearing that is necessary to keep them within bounds tends to increase the monotony. Granted their many other good qualities, all-yew plantings are ponderous, monumental and uninteresting. There is a dead-pan sort of dignity that sometimes turns into stuffiness in modest environments.

It seems to me that today in the northeastern United States about nine out of ten coniferous front plantings are made exclusively of yews. We are overdoing them. They are good evergreens, entitled to a prominent place at the house front,, but they cannot provide the diversity of forms, towering, trailing, or picturesque, that go to ward off monotony.

One of these effects often a helpful architectural note is the spiry silhouette of our native red cedar which by the way gives off some interesting shadows with landscape lighting. Unfortunately, this juniper has fallen into disgrace as the carrier of a rust disease that lives alternately on it and on various woody plants of the rose family, including orchard apples and some of the flowering crabs. This is a serious objection to the planting of our red cedar and its many cultivated varieties, and it probably accounts for their increasing disuse.

Those who like these accents but who wish to avoid the infectious red cedars may be interested to know that totally rustproof equivalents of them are available, practically indistinguishable from them in general effect and differing mainly in details of flower, foliage and fruit. The plants I refer to are a group of columnar, spiry-tipped forms of a Chinese species which are carried in nurseries under various names. mostly as Juniperus chinensis mas, J. chinensis columnaris viridis. Under the name J. chinensis columnaris is carried a more artificial-looking. very narrow, bluish form that does not make quite as good a substitute for the red cedar. An excellent fruit-bearing, green form is listed as J. chinensis keteleeri. This matches our native species closely as to color and appearance.

All these green Chinese columnar junipers are first-rate evergreens and are fully as hardy as our native red cedar. In fact, they are of a more robust constitution, grow more rapidly, reach a somewhat greater average ultimate height and develop a sturdier stem and leader that stand up better under weights of ice and snow.

Like the red cedar, in their youth they hear only, or predominantly, "juvenile," needle-like foliage, but are a little slower in passing to the "adult," whipcord type of growth. While our native red cedar comes in male (non fruiting)and female (berry-bearing) trees, this holds true for only a minority of the cultivated Chinese. forms. Most of them bear, into their adolescence, only or predominantly male flowers, and only at a more or less advanced age (perhaps 10 or 25 years) begin to produce female flowers and fruit as well. The male flowers are always very much more abundant than the female; in fact, in the spring, when they are laden with yellow pollen and open up, the trees seem thickly sprinkled with yellow. They are constructed a good deal like miniature pine cones. The female flowers are inconspicuous.

The berries of the Chinese forms grow very much larger than those of the native species, and do not ripen until the summer of the second year.

These Chinese junipers require full sun. They will not thrive even in light overhead shade. Nor will they endure crowding. In fact, their requirements are the same as those of the red cedar.

Some of them have been in cultivation for a long time. There is a record of one growing in a London garden as early as 1825. Not until 20 years later did they come more widely into cultivation. In 1845 Robert Fortune sent the English nurserymen Standish & Noble seeds he collected in the Ningpo tea district near Shanghai. At the same time he sent to London botanical specimens of the same kind which bore both fruit and male flower-cones. These specimens were recognized as a then new species, and named J. sphaerica. But the seed. lings which were raised by Standish & Noble bore juvenile foliage unlike that of the botanical pieces, and only male flowers and were not recognized as belonging to the same species. So, they were believed to be male youngsters of the species then long known as J. chinensis, and, therefore were given the name J. chinensis mas - a name which has stuck to them ever since, even into present. day handbooks. By this name, then, or any of the other names given for them above, you may obtain from nurseries one or another of these sturdy, rustproof substitutes for our native red cedar.

by: Keith Markensen

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