Juniper common seeds

Common juniper or Veres / Juniperus communis

An evergreen shrub 1-3 m high, less often a tree 8-12 m high. The crown is cone-shaped or ovoid, narrower in males, more or less ascending or prostrate in females, sometimes with branches hanging at the end.

The bark is dark gray or grayish-brown, longitudinally flaky. Shoots are reddish-brown.

Leaves 1-1.5 cm long, 0.7-7.5 mm wide, sessile, rigid, linear-subulate or subulate-acuminate, prickly, almost trihedral, dense, shallowly grooved above, with one inseparable or sometimes to the middle separated by a whitish stomatal strip, shiny green below with a blunt keel. The leaves are ring-shaped, three in each ring.

Monoecious or more often dioecious plants. Male cones (microstrobili) almost sessile, yellowish. Female cones - numerous cones, 5-9 mm in diameter, oblong-ovate or spherical, pale green, mature - black-blue with or without a blue bloom, ripening in the second or third year in autumn, consist of three or six scales, sit on very short legs. There are three (sometimes one or two) seeds in a cone, elongated-ovate or ovate-conical, yellow-brown.

The plant is used as an ornamental garden plant and in field-protective afforestation as a soil-fixing plant.

The wood is reddish with a pleasant smell; due to the small size of the tree, the wood has no industrial value. It is used for turning, carving, making toys and canes.

Dry distillation of wood yields burnt juniper oil "Oleum cadinum", used as an external distraction. The resin gives sandarak and is used to make white lacquer.

Cone berries are used in the alcoholic beverage industry, brewing, for the production of juniper vodka (boletus) and gin.

They are part of many spice mixes. First of all, juniper is used in all ways of cooking game, dark sauces, meat products, mainly fatty pork and lamb. It also improves the flavor of Savoy cabbage, red cabbage and beets. Pine needles and cone berries are used for smoking meat and fish products. Cone berries as a spice are used in the manufacture of fruit drinks, sweets, gingerbread.

Beer is brewed from ripe juniper fruits, sugar (juniper) is extracted, and wine is made.
Application in medicine

Juniper has strong phytoncidal properties. The Indians of North America, for the treatment of tuberculosis of the skin, bones and joints, placed patients in the thickets of this plant, where the air is saturated with volatile secretions.

Common juniper fruit (lat. Fructus Juniperi communis, Baccae Juniperi), which is harvested in autumn and dried at temperatures up to 30°C or under sheds, is used as a medicinal raw material. When picking berries, shake the bush or tap the branches with a stick. Ripe berries easily fall on matting or canvas spread under a bush. Drying should only be ripe berries of a brownish or purple-black color, shiny, sometimes with a bluish bloom. Unripe berries, stalks should be removed. Conditioned dried berries should be black-brown or purple, sometimes with a blue wax coating, with a sweetish-spicy taste, when rubbed - with an aromatic resinous odor, humidity not higher than 20%.

The essential oil obtained from unripe pine cones is used to make immersion oil for microscopic examination and refreshing essences. The so-called burnt juniper turpentine oil (“juniper tar”) is obtained from wood by dry distillation, recommended as an external pain reliever and distraction.

In medicine, cones are used as a diuretic, disinfectant of the urinary tract, expectorant, choleretic and digestive aid, with diarrhea, flatulence. The fruits are part of the diuretic fees. The essential oil from the needles has strong disinfecting properties, they treat trichomonas colpitis.

In folk medicine, they were used orally for edema, malaria, kidney disease, cystitis, leucorrhea, gout, rheumatism, as part of mixtures for metabolic polyarthritis; externally - as a distracting and analgesic rinse for inflammation of the gums, with weeping lichen, scabies. The roots were used for tuberculosis, bronchitis, gastric ulcer, skin diseases; decoction of branches - for allergies.

The use of cones is contraindicated in inflammation of the kidneys, as it can cause blood in the urine, serious poisoning and increased inflammation.