DECORATIVE JUNIPERS AND BROOM GRASS

     In winter, the adaptable and widespread red junipers and broom grass are decorative along expressways and some abandoned fields and meadows in southeastern Pennsylvania, and other places in the eastern United States.  These two kinds of abundant, successional plants are the most distinctive and attractive species in those human-made habitats, helping to beautify them.

     Red junipers have green needles the year around, which are outstanding among the grays, browns and yellows of deciduous shrubbery, weeds and grasses they stand among.  Junipers' needles are small, densely-packed, fragrant and sharp-pointed, which offer cover to small birds, including nesting field sparrows, song sparrows and American goldfinches and wintering, seed-eating dark-eyed juncos, white-crowned sparrows and tree sparrows.    

     Many people call these junipers "red cedars," but these conifers are in the juniper genus.  However, the junipers' red wood is used to make beautiful, fragrant chests, closets and other structures.

     Red junipers' prettiest features are their many pale-blue, berry-like cones liberally sprinkled through the needled limbs of female trees.  If one looks closely at their small, fleshy cones, one could see the faint lines of each scale.  

     A variety of birds, including American robins, cedar waxwings, starlings, yellow-rumped warblers and other species, consume junipers' lovely cones, as they do berries.  Those attractive birds add their beauties to that of the juniper trees.  

    As with berries, birds digest the pulp of juniper cones, but pass the seeds in their droppings, often far from the parent trees.  Next spring, some of those seeds sprout into juniper seedlings.

     Standing up to five feet tall in autumn and winter, the many clumps of perennial broom grass are a beautiful, unique, tawny-orange, making them stand out attractively in open, sunny habitats.  And they are most lovely in low-slanting, late-afternoon sunlight in winter, which enhances their appealing coloring and highlights the white fluff of each seed still attached to the plants.  The waving of the tawny stems in the wind adds still more beauty to these tall, winter grasses.      

     Though native to the eastern United States, patches of broom grass is another invader of disturbed habitats, which is what roadsides, fields and meadows are.  Broom grass helps hold down the soil and provides food and shelter for field mice, cottontail rabbits and other wildlife.  Red foxes can lie camouflaged among them and small, seed-eating birds ingest their seeds. 

     Watch for red junipers and broom grass along roadways, and in deserted fields and pastures.  Those plants are attractive in winter, and provide food and cover for certain kinds of wildlife.  They often inhabit the same habitats together, making those environments the more interesting.     

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