Bermuda juniper
| Bermuda juniper | ||||||||||||
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Juniperus bermudiana in Bermuda |
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| Juniperus bermudiana | ||||||||||||
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The Bermuda juniper ( Juniperus bermudiana ) is a plant from the family of the cypress family (Cupressaceae). It is a species endemic to the Bermuda Islands .
description
Habitus
The Bermuda juniper grows as an evergreen tree with a height of up to 15 meters. The young specimens are cone-shaped; the adult trees have a rounded crown and a strong trunk. The thin, gray-brown trunk bark comes off in strips. The branches stand upright. The four-winged, leafy and 2 to 4 centimeters long and 1.3 to 1.6 millimeters wide twigs branch out at an angle of 30 to 35 degrees. They are descending on young plants and on rapidly growing branches. The Bermuda juniper has widely branched roots .
leaves
The strongly square and green, scale-shaped leaves of the Bermuda juniper are opposite and overlap with a little less than half their length. The young, tightly pressed and about one millimeter long leaves are scale-like with a blunt to pointed apex; they are rounded at the leaf base. The elongated and deepened resin glands are indistinct on the scale-like leaves; in the needle-like leaves, however, they almost reach the tips.
Flowers, cones and seeds
Bermuda junipers are dioeciously segregated ( diocesan ). The flowering period extends from March to April. The pollen cones are yellow. The almost spherical to kidney-shaped seed cones are four to five millimeters long and six to eight millimeters wide. They develop to full maturity within the year and are then dark purple and frosted. Each cone contains one to two (rarely up to three) seeds .
Occurrence and endangerment
The Bermuda Juniper is endemic to the Bermuda Islands and was introduced to the South Atlantic island of St. Helena . It inhabits clayey slopes in Bermuda .
The Bermuda juniper is in the Red List of Threatened Species of IUCN threatened with extinction (as Critically Endangered ) assessed. He was mainly a victim of introduced insects, which led to defoliation and death. Between 1940 and 1955, over 90% of the holdings were destroyed, and an estimated 99% by 1978. Another threat is the competitive situation with imported juniper species that are resistant to these insects and also hybridize with the Bermuda juniper.
Systematics
Juniperus bermudiana was in 1753 by Linnaeus in Species Plantarum , Volume 2, pages 1039 first described . Robert P. Adams places this juniper species in a geographical group of the "junipers of the Caribbean". Synonyms for Juniperus bermudiana are Juniperus oppositifolia Moench , Juniperus pyramidalis Salisb. , Sabina bermudiana (L.) Antoine , Juniperus virginiana var. Bermudiana (L.) Vasey .
Web links
literature
- Christopher J. Earle: Juniperus bermudiana. In: The Gymnosperm Database. January 14, 2011, accessed January 5, 2012 .
- Robert P. Adams: Junipers of the World: The genus Juniperus . 2nd Edition. Trafford Publishing Co., Vancouver 2008, ISBN 978-1-4251-6880-3 , pp. 111-113 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Bermuda Cedar (Juniperus bermudiana). Bermuda Government, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, accessed March 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Juniperus bermudiana in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2011.2. Posted by: DB Wingate, RP Adams, M. Gardner, 2011. Accessed January 5, 2012.
- ↑ Carl von Linné: Species Plantarum . tape 2 . Stockholm 1753, p. 1039 ( biodiversitylibrary.org - Juniperus bermudiana scanned at Biodiversity Heritage Library ).