Rocky Mountain Juniper Identification Guide

Key Identifying Features

Rocky Mountain Juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) is a small to medium western juniper recognized by tiny scale-like blue-green to gray-green foliage, soft blue, berry-like cones with a whitish bloom, and fibrous, shreddy reddish-brown bark. Often shrubby or with a short twisted trunk, it dots dry foothills and rimrock across the interior West.

Leaves & Stems

• Adult foliage scale-like, tightly overlapping, 1 to 3 mm, pressed against the twig, blue-green to gray-green, sometimes with a glaucous bloom.
• Juvenile shoots and vigorous growth can bear short awl-shaped (needle-like) leaves.
• Crushed foliage gives a resinous, slightly sweet cedar scent.
• Bark thin, reddish-brown to gray, fibrous, peeling in long shreddy strips.
• Habit variable: pyramidal when young, becoming irregular, open, and often picturesque with age.

Flowers & Fruit

• Usually dioecious; female plants bear fleshy, berry-like cones ("juniper berries") about 5 to 7 mm, dark blue with a pale waxy bloom.
• Cones take about two years to ripen and contain typically two seeds.
• The soft blue berries are eaten by birds, which spread the seed.

How to Tell It Apart from Look-Alikes

• Eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) is very similar; Rocky Mountain Juniper tends to have a more bluish cast, slightly larger berries that take two years to mature, and ranges farther west — the two overlap and hybridize in the Great Plains.
• One-seed and California juniper have berries with usually one seed and a more shrubby, multi-stem desert form.
• Western redcedar (Thuja) has flat sprays of scale foliage and small woody cones, not blue berries.
• The blue scale foliage + blue bloomy berries + shreddy bark point to Rocky Mountain Juniper.

Where You'll Find It

Dry foothills, canyons, rocky slopes, and rimrock across the Rocky Mountains and interior West, from British Columbia and the Dakotas south to Arizona and New Mexico, generally at low to mid elevations. Tolerant of poor, rocky, alkaline soils; widely planted as 'Wichita Blue', 'Skyrocket', and other ornamental cultivars.

Quick ID Checklist

• Scale-like blue-green/gray-green foliage pressed to twigs
• Soft blue berry-cones with whitish bloom (5 to 7 mm)
• Berries take about two years to ripen
• Reddish-brown shreddy, fibrous bark
• Dry western foothills, canyons, and rimrock