Let's celebrate our most important Ice Age survivor, the juniper. Towards the end of the 18th century, the commercialisation of woodland management on many Highland estates started the disastrous trend towards diversity loss that we now strive to reverse. Some of the greatest impacts were on the least valued wood species, including juniper. It had been in natural decline for millennia - out-competed by the more aggressive birch - but it remained widespread in and around the Cairngorms, in Strathspey, Strathdearn, and the northern Highlands. In 1803, the poet Coleridge noted ‘a good deal of low cowring Juniper with its fruit of various years, purple and green’ as he traversed Strathdearn. Later in the century, when plans were drawn up for a road through the Coignafearn deer forest at the head of the strath, the surveyors noted the abundance of juniper wood there. Although juniper wood is said to have been valued alongside peat as a ‘smokeless’ fuel by illicit distillers, it is almost invisible as a resource in estate records and unmentioned in the Statistical Accounts. This perception of uselessness, also extended to alder and aspen as expressed by respondents to the OSA, meant no effort was made to conserve juniper. Indeed, juniper was rooted out to make way for Scots Pine plantation on the Grant and Mackintosh estates in Strathdearn and Strathspey from the 1790s onwards. Increasing numbers of grazing animals – and from the 1840s onwards uncontrolled deer numbers - accelerated natural decline by halting regeneration through seed dispersal. It is only in recently, with the inclusion of juniper amongst species being planted in upland conservation and restoration programmes, that the populations of this undervalued species have begun to recover. This picture is of my favourite juniper, an over-browsed veteran clinging on near Achnahyle in Stratha'an. #scottishwoodlandhistory #scottishenvironmentalhistory #woodland #cairngormsconnect #traditionalwooduse
