Juniperus brevifolia is a species of juniper

Juniper

Junipers are coniferous plants in the genus Juniperus of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on taxonomic viewpoint, there are between 50-67 species of juniper, widely distributed throughout the northern hemisphere, from the Arctic, south to tropical Africa in the Old World, and to the...

, endemic to the Azores

Azores

The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...

 (on Corvo

Corvo Island

Corvo Island , literally the Island of the Crow, is the smallest and the northernmost island of the Azores archipelago and the northernmost in Macaronesia, with a population of approximately 468 inhabitants constituting the smallest single municipality in Azores and in Portugal.-History:A small...

, Faial

Faial Island

Faial Island , also known in English as Fayal, is a Portuguese island of the Central Group of the Azores....

, Flores, Pico

Pico Island

Pico Island , is an island in the Central Group of the Portuguese Azores noted for its eponymous volcano, Ponta do Pico, which is the highest mountain in Portugal, the Azores, and the highest elevation of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge...

, Santa Maria

Santa Maria Island

Santa Maria , Portuguese for Saint Mary, is an island located in the eastern group of the Azores archipelago and the southernmost island in the Azores...

, São Jorge, São Miguel

São Miguel Island

São Miguel Island , nicknamed "The Green Island", is the largest and most populous island in the Portuguese Azores archipelago. The island covers and has around 140,000 inhabitants, 45,000 of these people located in the largest city in the archipelago: Ponta Delgada.-History:In 1427, São Miguel...

, and Terceira

Terceira Island

Referred to as the “Ilha Lilás” , Terceira is an island in the Azores archipelago, in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is one of the larger islands of the archipelago, with a population of 56,000 inhabitants in an area of approximately 396.75 km²...

), where it occurs at altitudes of 240-800 m, rarely up to 1,500 m. It is closely related to Juniperus oxycedrus

Juniperus oxycedrus

Juniperus oxycedrus is a species of juniper, native across the Mediterranean region from Morocco and Portugal, north to southern France, east to westernmost Iran, and south to Lebanon and Israel, growing on a variety of rocky sites from sea level up...

(Prickly Juniper) of the Mediterranean region and Juniperus cedrus

Juniperus cedrus

Juniperus cedrus is a species of juniper, native to the western Canary Islands and Madeira , where it occurs at altitudes of 500-2400 m...

(Canary Islands Juniper) of the Canary Islands

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

. It is threatened by habitat loss.

It is a shrub

Shrub

A shrub or bush is distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and shorter height, usually under 5–6 m tall. A large number of plants may become either shrubs or trees, depending on the growing conditions they experience...

 or small tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

 growing to a height of 6 m and a trunk diameter up to 50 cm. The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are evergreen

Evergreen

In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant that has leaves in all seasons. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose their foliage during the winter or dry season.There are many different kinds of evergreen plants, both trees and shrubs...

, needle-like, in whorls of three, glaucous green, 4-10 mm long and 1-3 mm broad, with a double white stoma

Stoma

In botany, a stoma is a pore, found in the leaf and stem epidermis that is used forgas exchange. The pore is bordered by a pair of specialized parenchyma cells known as guard cells that are responsible for regulating the size of the opening...

tal band (split by a green midrib) on the inner surface. It is dioecious

Plant sexuality

Plant sexuality covers the wide variety of sexual reproduction systems found across the plant kingdom. This article describes morphological aspects of sexual reproduction of plants....

, with separate male and female plants. The seed cones

Conifer cone

A cone is an organ on plants in the division Pinophyta that contains the reproductive structures. The familiar woody cone is the female cone, which produces seeds. The male cones, which produce pollen, are usually herbaceous and much less conspicuous even at full maturity...

 are berry

Berry

The botanical definition of a berry is a fleshy fruit produced from a single ovary. Grapes are an example. The berry is the most common type of fleshy fruit in which the entire ovary wall ripens into an edible pericarp. They may have one or more carpels with a thin covering and fleshy interiors....

-like, green ripening in 18 months to orange-red with a variable pink waxy coating; they are spherical, 6-9 mm diameter, and have three or six fused scales in one or two whorls of three, the three larger scales each with a single seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

. The seeds are dispersed when bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s eat the cones, digesting the fleshy scales and passing the hard seeds in their droppings. The male cones are yellow, 2-3 mm long, and fall soon after shedding their pollen

Pollen

Pollen is a fine to coarse powder containing the microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce the male gametes . Pollen grains have a hard coat that protects the sperm cells during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants or from the male cone to the...

 in early spring.

It is endangered

Endangered species

An endangered species is a population of organisms which is at risk of becoming extinct because it is either few in numbers, or threatened by changing environmental or predation parameters...

 in its native range due to a combination of historical felling for the valuable wood and competition from invasive introduced plants.