Return of the Juniper

In 2015 Manx Wildlife Trust launched the Ramsey Forest Project and one of its first tasks was the reintroduction of juniper to the Glen Auldyn area. In the first year it was just a few, but in the second year we planted 50. The trees came from Scottish Highland stock so we know they will be hardy. The trees were tiny when planted and we tucked them into gaps in heather bushes to provide shelter from the wind.

For a few years it was almost impossible to find the young junipers and we even feared that many had died, however from 2020 we were able to see the young trees emerge from the heather. A closer look showed that nearly every tree had survived and were looking healthy. They will grow at about 10cm a year now even in the harshest conditions.

We can now say that Juniper is back, but it is not yet secure. Only female trees will produce berries and a proportion of the trees planted are likely to perish before maturity, so to get a sustainable return we need to have several hundred established in the Glen Auldyn area.

In 2022 we planted a small grove of Junipers at the Victory Café and at 420m are close to the natural tree line. Our next steps will be to plant more bushes around Glen Auldyn. You may see some from the Mountain Road in coming years as scattered bushes will be planted near places like Guthrie’s memorial. They will look a bit like large gorse bushes at first, but as they become 2-4m high they will eventually stand out.

Junipers do not naturally grow in dense populations where the canopies touch and shade out the habitat below. Their natural growth is really scattered bushes, rather than closed woodland. Our planting will reflect this and we will ensure that the integrity of the moorland is retained when junipers become established. We may even remove juniper if we feel we have overstocked an area. Between the scattered junipers there will be scattered willow, birch and rowan and at lower altitudes junipers will be included as a lower canopy tree in birch woodland. While young junipers are vulnerable to heavy grazing pressures, older juniper bushes can manage with traditional sheep grazing with light grazing levels can even spread.

Junipers are a dense and prickly bush, so are a much sought-after nesting spot for song birds such as song thrush. Moorland edge birds such as tree pipit will use them as will other migratory warblers. The sheltered spaces between juniper bushes should make ideal nesting for hen harriers or short eared owls. The berries are often eaten by migratory birds such as redwing and fieldfare who can disperse the berries a long way.

When the juniper became extinct as a native tree the native insects dependent on it should have gone extinct too. However cultivated junipers of many species and varieties became a common garden shrub in the past 150 years and species such as the juniper shield-bug can still be found on the Island. Hopefully these garden insects will recolonise their true moorland home in time.

The female bushes take about ten years before they produce berries and berries take 2 years to ripen on the bush. It is likely that the highly aromatic berries would have been used in beer making on the Island, as most wild plants that had bitter aromatic parts were used until the ‘Pure Beer Act of 1874’. Juniper beer is still commonly brewed in all Nordic countries, so it is very likely to have been a tradition here many hundreds of years ago.

While the island could have ripe wild juniper berries before 2030, it is highly unlikely that commercial picking of such a rare plant will take place for a while yet. However with more tree planting, especially of native trees, it could be that by the middle of the century the juniper is such a common tree on the Island again that we could see out first Manx gin made from wild Manx juniper berries.