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Juniper in jeopardy
Moughton – pronounced Moo-tun – is generally considered to have one of the prettiest summits of all fells in northern England. And although its views across the famous Three Peaks are spectacular, what makes Moughton so memorable is a large expanse of juniper.
Everywhere you look, bushes spring out of the bone-white limestone pavement. The branches of bright-green needles are so rigid that they hardly seem to notice even the stiffest breeze. From a distance it can look like a sea of green waves.
Many walkers come across the bushes while using an old bridleway which runs from Ribblesdale over to Crummackdale and the village of Austwick, sometimes stopping to rub one of the blue-black berries and release the distinctive smell of gin.
There are two other big expanses of juniper in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, both in Swaledale. One is near the village of Thwaite and is owned by the Woodland Trust. Another is further down the dale at Harkerside Moor on land owned by Lord Peel.
Limestone areas are particularly favoured by evergreen juniper, since
the shrub likes well-drained soils, and there is a well-known colony on the limestone hill known as Arnside Knott near Morecambe Bay.
Farmers have sometimes used sprays of juniper as a substitute for barbed wire, so sharp are the needles. And the Ministry of Defence's Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment at Porton Down in Wiltshire has Britain's largest area of juniper – a 14,000-bush colony planted as a buffer zone to keep out any intruders who manage to scale the perimeter fence.
But nationally, juniper has been disappearing since the 1960s, mainly because of changes in land management, and the shrub has been put on a national watchlist because colonies are declining dramatically.
In the Dales, heavy sheep grazing has had a dramatic effect on the juniper. The seeds are notoriously fickle at regenerating, and if the land is grazed, they stand far less chance of growing. Only about 10 per cent of juniper seed is viable in good conditions, but 98 per cent can be "empty seeds" in some places.
By comparison, trees like oak and sycamore have an almost 100 per cent success rate. The Forestry Commission has been doing research on juniper seed and developed a non-destructive x-ray test to find the small proportion of seeds that are good quality and worth planting, and eliminate the worthless seeds.
As a result, the National Park has begun a project to help the junipers to survive. The operation includes taking "good" seeds from the three Dales sites and growing them at a professional tree nursery for planting this coming winter.
The first seeds were collected in 2006, and in accordance with Forestry Commission guidance many young plants will be placed within one kilometre of the juniper populations from which seeds were collected. Others will be used for planting in new woodland schemes.
Phill Hibbs, the Park's trees and woodlands officer, has been working with a number of farmers and landowners to prepare the ground in which the new junipers will be planted.
"The young junipers are just starting to come to plantable age now," he says, "so hopefully the work will start in November and run through to March next year."
Young junipers take three or four years to reach the 15-20cm height necessary for planting.
They have been grown in a nursery at the Scottish border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.
Frances Graham, the National Park's wildlife conservation officer, says that reviving juniper's fortunes in the Dales is a long process.
"Because the bushes grow so slowly, we are also taking cuttings from the wild that will be grown on and be ready much earlier."
The work is being carried out in partnership with Natural England, the Woodland Trust and landowners who applied to take part in the replanting.
Frances adds: "With their continued support, we plan to collect seed annually to provide a steady supply of local plants for suitable new native woodlands."
From medicine to massage, juniper through the ages
The taste of juniper berries is known to millions of people as the distinctive flavouring of gin. Juniper in French is genivre, the origin of the word gin. However, despite gin being distilled at several UK locations and two of the most popular styles being London Dry and Plymouth Gin, native juniper berries have not been used by British distillers since Victorian times. Today's gin is made with berries imported from eastern Europe. Those from Macedonia and Albania are particularly sought-after for their perfumed flavour.
In medieval times, the berries were considered "a most admirable counter-poyson" and a "great resister of the pestilence" and used to treat typhoid, cholera and a wide range of sickness conditions. The most famous application over the centuries has been the swallowing of juniper berries to abort unwanted babies, and one of its old nicknames is "the bastard killer". This is perhaps the origin of the belief that drinking gin can induce a miscarriage in the early stages of pregnancy.
Oil of Juniper is one of the oldest known essential oils. The ancient Egyptians are known to have used it in perfumes and cosmetics. Traces of it were also found by archaeologists in pots recovered from prehistoric European settlements, some of them dating back 4,000 years. Its uses there ranged from relieving flatulence to being a disinfectant against lice, ticks and fleas. In some places juniper branches were also used to protect against evil and nailed on to doors in the hope of keeping away devils, elves and witches. In Cumbria, where there are still some thriving areas of juniper around Little Langdale, it is said that berries have been crushed and mixed with horse feed to "ginger them up".
Today, the oil is popular in aromatherapy and massage as a way of rejuvenating the mind. But the most common use of juniper berries is in cookery, being widely available in supermarket shelves because many recipes for game such as venison and pheasant call for their use as a flavouring.
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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