In America only occasionally tree-like and 10°—20° tall, with a short eccentric irregularly lobed trunk rarely a foot in diameter, erect branches forming an irregular open head, slender branchlets, smooth, lustrous, and conspicuously 3-angled between the short nodes during their first and second years, light yellow tinged with red, gradually growing darker, their dark red-brown bark separating in the third season into small thin scales, and ovoid acute buds about ⅛′ long and loosely covered with scale-like leaves; more often a shrub, with many short slender stems prostrate at the base and turning upward and forming a broad mass sometimes 20° across and 3° or 4° high (var. _depressa_ Pursh.); at high elevations and in the extreme north prostrate, with long decumbent stems and shorter and more crowded leaves (var. _montana_ Ait.) passing into the var. _Jackii_ Rehdr. with long trailing branches and broader incurved leaves. Bark about 1/16′ thick, dark reddish brown, separating irregularly into many loose papery persistent scales. Wood hard, close-grained, very durable in contact with the soil, light brown, with pale sapwood. In northern Europe the sweet aromatic fruit of this tree is used in large quantities to impart its peculiar flavor to gin; occasionally employed in medicine. Distribution. Occasionally arborescent in New England, eastern Pennsylvania, and on the high mountains of North Carolina; the var. _depressa_, common in poor rocky soil, Newfoundland to southern New England, and to the shores of the Great Lakes and northwestward; the var. _montana_ from the coast of Greenland to northern New England, on the high Appalachian Mountains, North Carolina, and to northern Nebraska, along the Rocky Mountains from Alberta to western Texas, and on the Pacific coast from Alaska, southward along mountain ranges to the high Sierras of central California, extending eastward to the mountains of eastern Washington and Oregon, and on the high peaks of northern Arizona up to altitudes of 10,000°—11,500° (_P. Lowell_); the var. _Jackii_ on the coast mountains from northern California to Vancouver Island; in the Old World widely distributed in many forms through all the northern hemisphere from arctic Asia and Europe to Japan, the Himalayas and the mountains of the Mediterranean Basin. Often planted, especially in several of its pyramidal and dwarf forms, in the eastern United States and in the countries of western, central, and northern Europe. 2. Juniperus Pinchotii Sudw. [Illustration: Fig. 79]