Juniperus formosana Seeds | Formosan Juniper

Formosan Juniper (Juniperus formosana) with slender needle-like foliage on an upright evergreen tree — Formosan Juniper (*Juniperus formosana*): Cupressaceae, a slender needle juniper of the Chinese and Taiwanese mountains.

LATIN NAME: Juniperus formosana

COMMON NAME: Formosan Juniper

Plant Profile

The Formosan Juniper is a slender, upright, evergreen tree of the cypress family from the mountains of central and southern China, Taiwan and Hainan, and its foliage is a distinction that matters: it is a needle juniper, carrying sharp, awl-shaped, bluish-green leaves in whorls of three rather than the soft scales of its commoner relatives, and the overall effect is finer, more open and more pointed than a scale juniper. The bark shreds in thin, reddish-brown strips, and the small, round cones ripen over two years to a glaucous brownish-blue.

It grows five to ten metres in the wild, on forest margins, ridges and scrubby slopes from low hills to three thousand metres, and in gardens it makes an upright, open, rather architectural small tree. Crushed, the foliage smells sharply resinous and clean.

Science & Biotechnology

The species’ classification has been examined in the great juniper revision literature, and it sits among the Asian needle junipers whose relationships to their relatives in Japan and the Himalaya have been tested with morphology and molecular data. Needle junipers carry both juvenile and mature leaf forms on the same plant, and this species keeps its needle foliage for life on most shoots, which is part of its identification. Its essential oil has been analysed in Chinese studies, with the typical juniper terpenoid profile, and the wood’s aromatic oils belong to the same tradition that scents pencils, chests and incense across the genus.

In its range it is a tree of exposed, thin-soiled mountain sites, and its hardiness in cultivation reflects that origin: it takes cold, wind and poor ground without complaint.

Uses & Benefits

In the garden it is an upright, fine-textured, sharply blue-green conifer for poor, dry, exposed ground, useful where a scale juniper would look heavy and a columnar form too formal. It suits rocky gardens, hot banks and mixed conifer plantings, and its needle foliage catches frost and rime beautifully in winter.

The cones feed birds through winter, the dense, spiny foliage shelters them in nesting season, and the aromatic wood has the same traditional uses as its relatives. It is a modest tree, and its value is texture, resilience and a slightly wild, mountain look that most garden conifers lack.

Growing from Seed

Clean the pulp from ripe cones and give the seed the juniper treatment: warm, moist stratification for two months, then cold for three to four, or sow outdoors and expect germination in the second spring. Sow into a free-draining compost, keep it just moist, and be patient; juniper seed tests every grower’s patience.

Grow the seedlings in full sun on the dry side and pot on as the deep root run develops. Plant out into any well-drained soil in full sun, spacing for a slender five-to-ten-metre tree, and water through the first two summers. After establishment it needs nothing beyond space, and it stands cold, wind and drought that defeat most evergreens.

Our Take

A slender, sharply-needled juniper of the Chinese mountains, blue-green in whorls of three and indifferent to drought, wind or poor soil. A mountain look for the driest corners.

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