While the present vogue of yews for house front plantings is an improvement over the earlier “chess formation period” of golden Chamaecyparis, peaky arborvitae, and such, it has brought about a marked degree of monotony.
This is not so much a matter of their color, which runs to good deep greens, as it is of the limited diversity of growth forms among them.
The shearing is necessary to keep them within bounds and tends to increase the monotony.
Granted their many other good qualities, all-yew plantings are ponderous, monumental, and unintriguing.
A dead-pan sort of dignity sometimes turns into stuffiness in modest environments.
Red Cedar For Front Plantings
It seems to me that today in the northeastern United States, about 9 out of 10 coniferous front plantings are made exclusively of yews.
We are overdoing them. They are good evergreens, entitled to a prominent place at the housefront. Still, they cannot provide the diversity of forms, towering, trailing, or picturesque, that go to ward off monotony.
One of these effects—often a helpful architectural note—is the spiry silhouette of our native red cedar.
Unfortunately, this juniper has fallen into disgrace as the carrier of a rust disease that lives alternately on it and various woody plants of the rose family, including orchard apples and some of the flowering crabs.
This is a serious objection to planting our red cedar and its wide cultivated varieties, which probably accounts for their increasing disuse.
Rustproof Equivalents Of Red Cedars
Those who like these accents but wish to avoid the infectious red cedars may be interested to know that their totally rustproof equivalents are available, practically indistinguishable from them in general effect and differing mainly in details of a flower, foliage, and fruit.
The plants I refer to are a group of columnar, spiry-tipped forms of a Chinese species carried in nurseries under various names, mostly as Juniperus Chinensis mas, Juniperus Chinensis columnaris Viridis.
Under the name, Juniperus Chinensis columnaris is carried a more artificial-looking, very narrow, bluish form that does not make quite as good a substitute for the red cedar.
An excellent fruit-bearing, green form is listed as Juniperus Chinensis keteleeri. This matches our native species closely as to color and appearance.
All these green Chinese columnar junipers are first-rate evergreens and are fully as hardy as our native red cedar.
In fact, they are of a more robust constitution, grow more rapidly, reach a somewhat greater average ultimate height, and develop a sturdier stem and leader that stand up better under weights of ice and snow.
Like the red cedar, in their youth, they hear only, or predominantly, “juvenile,” needle-like foliage but are a little slower in passing to the “adult,” whipcord type of growth.
Unique Characteristics Of Cultivated Chinese Forms
While our native red cedar comes in male (non-fruiting) and female (berry-bearing) trees, this holds true for only a minority of the cultivated Chinese forms.
Most of them bear, into their adolescence, only or predominantly male flowers, and only at a more or less advanced age (perhaps 10 or 25 years) begin to produce female flowers and fruit as well.
The male flowers are always very much more abundant than the female.
In fact, when they are laden with yellow pollen and open up in the spring, the trees seem thickly sprinkled with yellow.
They have constructed a good deal like miniature pine cones. The female flowers are inconspicuous.
The berries of the Chinese forms grow very much larger than those of the native species and do not ripen until the summer of the second year.
These Chinese junipers require full sun. They will not thrive even in the light overhead shade. Nor will they endure crowding.
In fact, their requirements are the same as those of the red cedar.
Long History Of Cultivation
Some of them have been in cultivation for a long time. For example, there is a record of one growing in a London garden as early as 1825.
Not until 20 years later did they come more widely into cultivation.
In 1845, Robert Fortune sent the English nurserymen Standish & Noble seeds he collected in the Ningpo tea district near Shanghai.
At the same time, he sent to London botanical specimens of the same kind, which bore both fruit and male flower cones.
These specimens were recognized as a then-new species and named Juniperus sphaerica.
But the seedlings raised by Standish & Noble bore juvenile foliage unlike that of the botanical pieces and only male flowers and were not recognized as belonging to the same species.
So, they were believed to be male youngsters of the species long known as Juniperus Chinensis and were given the name Juniperus Chinensis mas. This name has stuck to them ever since, even in present-day handbooks.
By this name, then, or any of the other names given above, you may obtain one or another of these sturdy, rustproof substitutes for our native red cedar from nurseries.
44659 by P. J. Van Melle