THE Juniper tree can be decorated as a great living Christmas Tree, and can double as part of your home décor for years to come.

Were you to adorn the small Juniper tree with miniature lights and ornaments, hang colourful candy canes with small red balls, or colour-coordinate with your overall Christmas theme, and add a bit of garland for an even better festive effect, you would be richly rewarded with a tree that seems to have come alive to brighten your world for the festive season.

The Juniper is an evergreen tree that has soft needles instead of leaves. It has, from time immemorial, been associated with Christmas.
These trees were not available locally last year, but the good news is that they are this year, and can be bought for as little as $2500 each.

The symbolism of the Juniper tree is rooted in one of the many stories told about the flight of the Holy Family from Bethlehem to Egypt to escape the wrath of King Herod.

Paranoid about the birth of a new King, Herod had decided to kill all the children under two years of age in the village of Bethlehem, and thereby eliminate the threat to his throne.

Warned about the imminent slaughter, the Holy Family fled Bethlehem, with Herod’s soldiers in hot pursuit.
The Holy Family, it has been related, hastened through fields of peas and flax and thickets of various shrubs with hardly any cover in which to hide.

Then a Juniper bush growing nearby opened up its thick branches to enclose them.
The inside of the large bush became a soft bed, sheltering the fleeing family, while needles on the outside branches grew prickly as spears.

Herod’s soldiers could not penetrate the spiky branches of the Juniper, and unknowingly passed the family by.

Junipers are coniferous plants in the genus Juniperus of the cypress family Cupressaceae.
Since this much related episode in the flight to Egypt hundreds of years ago, the Juniper tree has been seen as a reminder of the miracle of Joseph, the baby Jesus and Mary, the Mother of God.

Wikipedia states that the common Juniper has the largest geographic range of any woody plant in the world, and there are between 50 and 67 species of Junipers widely distributed throughout western Alaska; throughout Canada and the northern parts of the USA; in the coastal areas of Greenland; in Iceland; throughout Europe, and in northern Asia and Japan; in North Africa and south to tropical Africa; and in the mountains of Central America and Australasia.

The Juniper plant can be, and is, cultivated locally.
Currently, living Juniper plants capable of being beautifully decorated for Christmas and lasting for long after are on sale at the #1 Plant Shop at 70 Sheriff Street, Campbellville (telephone # 227 8094).
A staffer there says that the plants, averaging about two feet in height, can be bought for $2500 each.

The Christmas Juniper is also available as part of a floral arrangement of fresh-cut plants put together specifically for Christmas at Nesha’s Flower Land in Church Street, east of the National Library.
Here, the Juniper is part of Christmas centre pieces which comprise other Christmas plants which have been imported, such as the poinsettia and the eucalyptus.
Proprietress Nesha Deonauth said the Christmas centre pieces which include the juniper will last throughout the holidays and well beyond, once properly cared for.