by Elizabeth McGreevy Seiler
The writings below represent the rough, unedited version of my book on the Ashe juniper. Everything will be referenced to literary sources when the book is published. There is a chance the book may be published through this web site. If so, then you will be able to order a download of the book at that time.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
PART 1: THE ASHE JUNIPER, 101
The Many Names and Characters of the Ashe Juniper
Where It Grows Today
PART 2: FROM RESPECT TO HATE
Historically, A Respected Tree with Many Uses
The Life of Charcoal Burners & Cedar Choppers
What Turned the Tide from Respect to Hate
The Culprit of Cedar Fever
Our Invasive Curse
A Political Pawn for An Endangered Bird
PART 3: DEBUNKING THE MYTHS OF THE ASHE JUNIPER
A Texas Native it is
The Hill Country was Not a Vast Ocean of Grass
It was a Land with Old-Growth Cedar Brakes
Not the Tremendous Water Hog We Want to Believe it is
Not a Toxic Suppressor of Other Plants
A Tree That Acts as Nature's Bandaid, not as Nature's Erosive Force
Not a Useless Tree in the Eyes of Wildlife
Not even a Useless Tree for Humans
PART 3: MANAGING THE ASHE JUNIPER
The New Goal: Cedar Management, not Cedar Eradication
How to Identify your Old-Growth Cedars
Learning to Use your Ashe junipers for living cages, wildlife corridors and better soils
A Look at Different Management Strategies
CONCLUSION
Why we can and should respect the tree today
The Ashe Juniper is a sympton, not the cause of our problems
APPENDIX
Other Texas Junipers
Ashe Juniper Cultivation
Plants that Grow Beneath Ashe Junipers
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Introduction
Like the wiley coyote, and just as common, the mountain cedar continues to persist in the Texas Hill Country. Almost ubiquitous, the tree has become viewed as the bane of ranching, development and water management. Forget that, in days by-gone, the tree was held in high esteem. Today, people literally hate the tree.
The mountain cedar, alias Ashe juniper, blue-berry juniper,post cedar, cedro, sabino, rock cedar, and Ozark white cedar, grows everywhere. It takes over and forms impenetrable thickets of twigs and branches that poke your eye and tear your clothing. Come winter every year, their clouds of yellow pollen roll down from the hillsides so as to plague you with months of sneezing,water eyes and itching. In short, they plague you with that most famous allergy: cedar fever. Just when you're clear of the thickets and cedar fever, you hear that nothing grows under the damn scrappy trees except rocks and all they do is sit there all day sucking water from the aquifer. Hell, you figure, these cedars aren't native and they are totally useless, so, let's annililate them all!
Now, hold your horses and take in a deep breath of Hill Country air that is embued with the sweet smell of cedar and limestone. The mountain cedar is not the bane of nature you have come to believe it is. Many of the myths that have become synonymous with the tree are just myths. When the Lipan Apaches and Tonkawas moved through the Hill Country of the past, as the early explorers blazed their trails, and when the German settlers arrived, they did not have wild, negative notions about the tree.
Why? For one, the trees were not ubiquitous and the land not ravaged the way it is now. Back then, the juniper, mixed with oaks and other trees, covered about 60% of the Hill Country. It was uncommon in the western Edwards Plateau and Llano Uplift, occurred only on scarps and smaller plateaus in the Lampassas Cut Plains, and was common in the Western Cross Timbers. Today though, it is common in all these regions. Another reason why early people did not hate the Ashe juniper is that those early people relied on the cedar for their homes, fences, firewood, and charcoal. To them, the tree was precious.
Once the Hill Country became designated as a region for ranching, we learned to shun anything that inhibits the growth of grasses. Instead we desire the parkland of an endless sea of grass dotted with oak trees. More recently, the presence of cedar has become shunned by developers since old-growth cedars can block development (mainly because of an endangered bird). Now, both developers and ranchers embrace the parkland myth: it justifies their clearcutting. Vast thickets of mountain cedar mean less grass to feed their cattle and to a rancher, that means less income. To a developer it means fewer homes and limited views. An endless parkland of majestic oaks and grasses waving in the wind is what we have come to expect and even romanticize. Through human eyes, a thicket of cedar is not romantic and does not benefit us.
We have been removing woody trees, mostly the mountain cedar and bald cypress, since the mid 1800's. Initially the removal was for building homes and fences. Then it was for selling the wood for posts,railroad ties, telegraph poles and shingles. Then it was to deter the vast flocks of passenger pigeons who swooped down from the north to feed on the juniper berries. When it was seen that the grasses grew quickly in place of the removed trees, ranchers immediately placed large herds of goats, sheep and cattle on the lands. Once the animals were fenced in, overgrazing and soil erosion became commonplace.
In 1894 we entered a decade long drought. Everything dried up. Many plants and animals died. By the turn of the century, the Hill Country was mostly a desert grassland. The trees that remained were mostly liveoaks. Live oaks were rarely cut for their wood. Instead they were left to provide shade for homesteads and cattle. Without the cover of trees, the land was exposed. The grasses alone, lacking a dense canopy, could not decrease the amount of moisture lost to heat evaporation. The drought ended when flooding rains returned with a vengence. The topsoil was grossly eroded.The resulting shallow soils could not retain moisture long enough for the grasses. Far too quickly, moisture was lost to the sun. Add to these environmental woes the fact that humans now thought praire fires, that controlled excessive woody plant growth and rejuvenated the soils for grasses, were a bad thing. The grasses alone, could no longer compete in this damaged landscape.
Another plant was adapted. This plant could germinate on bare rock, develop a thick canopy relatively quickly to protect the earth beneath the plant, and drop an emormous amount of leaf litter that could build soil and capture and hold water. It also was capable of spreading an enormous amount of seed. When fires were common, this was its mechanisn to ensure the survival of a few. Yet, without fires, they all survived. This plant was our mountain cedar, or Ashe juniper tree. It was nature's band-aid.
The Many Names and Character of the Ashe juniper
For those if you who still don't know what the mountain cedar is, just take a drive anywhere in the Hill Country. Most of those shrubby, evergreen plants dotting the landscape are cedars. If you leave the highway and enter the woods, go find the older mountain cedars with shaggy trunks that twist from the limestone. These are the most beautiful mountain cedars with twisted limbs. As you walk amongst mountain cedars tune your senses to the fragrance that surrounds you. Your senses will not be able to resist the sweet, piney fragrance of the cedar's deep green foliage, that, when mixed with dusty limestone, leaves you with a sense of the Hill Country: uninhibited and persistent wildness.
An Ugly Tree...So They Say
The Ashe juniper is not an elegant or graceful tree, as is the bald cypress. Nor is it majestic or a symbol of strength, as is the almighty oak tree or pecan. Many a person has cleared cedars from their lands simply because they don't think the trees are pretty. These same folks yearn for the elegance and majesty of the fable forests of lore. When most folks see the commonplace Ashe juniper, all they see is scrappy, twisted, shredded, irratic vegetation that impedes a leisurely stroll through Sherwood Forest.
Ashe junipers are not elegant nor majestic, I'll give you that. But what they have is another quality that suits the wild flavor of the Hill Country: they are picturesque. Simply defined, picturesque is that which would make a good picture. More than that, picturesque is defined as that which has "a striking, irregular beauty, quaintness or charm." Now I won't go so far as to say our junipers are charming or quaint, but they most definitely possess a striking, irregular beauty.
If your only response is "rubbish," then you have only acquainted yourself with the immature, scrappy junipers. You have not been in the presence of our old-growth Ashe junipers. These latter trees are the picturesque forms of which I speak. Whether they twist and bend from a limestone ledge high above a rocky creek, spread their sinewy branches across a spacious sun lit prairie or thrust their trunks this way and that within the shadows of a cedar brake, these older trees are picturesque. But, like an ugly duckling, it takes them at least a hundred years to attain that degree of beauty.
We need to reaccess our Ashe juniper. Instead of looking for the elegant and majestic by clearing that which is not, we need to appreciate that which is different. The Ashe juniper is the ultimate expression of the landscape within which it resides: a wild and tumbled terrain. An old-growth juniper has learned to work with the rocky outcrops, steep slopes, thin soils, droughts and winds. Our old junipers speak of conditions endured.
In regions where the bristlecone pine endures, these trees are revered as sacred; as ultimate expressions of nature. They have been photographed countless times. Their forms have been caught on film by many an artful eye. Once captured and isolated on film with the golden glow of a sunset to accentuate their weathered limbs, these trees become viewed as works of art; they are picturesque. A single photograph of a single bristlecone conveys more about the regional landscape than hundreds of photographs without the tree.
Although the conditions the bristlecone endures are far more distressing than what the Hill Country has to provide, our Ashe juniper still remains as an expression of hard times. Perhaps it is this expression that frightens people who want only the elegant and majestic; who do not want to face the reality of hard times. But, the Hill Country is a land of contrasts. The elegance and majesty is there, especially in our bottomlands and canyons and superimposed upon the elegance is the wildness. The wildness is that which abounds. The elegance is a subset of the wild. It is the alley of graceful, towering bald cypresses lining the cool waters of the Guadalupe, backed with stoney slopes covered with a rampage of wild junipers.
To fully appreciate the wildness of our Ashe junipers, we must let go of preconceived notions of what is aesthetic, especially those notions imposed by lands far beyond the reaches of the Hill Country, such as the forests of the eastern United States. Our land is what it is, and its trees are what they are. For in their inherent wildness, the Ashe junipers are beautiful.
The Culprit of Cedar Fever
The Burning Bush of Cedar Fever
The Ashe juniper, commonly called mountain cedar, is commonplace from Central Texas to Oklahoma. Come winter every year, they produce clouds of yellow pollen that roll down from the hillsides to plague us with months of our infamous hayfever: cedar fever.
If cedar fever lasted only a few days, no one would think twice; but, it doesn't. It lasts up to three months. Many a plagued soul has put pen to paper to express their woes of cedar fever. In a 1998 Texas Monthly article, Patricia Sharpe wrote: "The signs are unmistakable: the eyes burn and turn fiery red; the nose runs; the insides of the ears itch. Incessant sneezing--up to two or three hundred times a day...On top of this, an insidious malaise sets in, making it hard to do anything but stare vacantly at the wall..." In a January 2000 Statesman, a blurb by Janet Jacobs read: "...cedar fever jumped me like a duck on a June bug, leaving me snot-nosed and weepy within minutes of my openning my door..."
Hill Country Germans were the first, at least of the white folks, to experience the joys of cedar fever. Every Christmas, settlers brought Ashe junipers inside for Christmas decoration. Little did they know the sneezing and watery eyes of the season had nothing to do with woes of missing their homeland, but everything to do with the pollen that exploded in the dry air of their potbelly heated homes. It was not until 1918 that cedar fever was formally linked to male juniper trees by Dr. Sam Key and Dr. Mary Young of the University of Texas Botany Department. They determined Ashe junipers pollinate December through March, the height of cedar fever season.
If you examine the mountain cedar closely, you might come upon the most well known characteristic of the mountain cedar: the yellow capsules of the male trees (those without the berries) that house copious amounts of cedar pollen. This dreaded pollen is only produced on male junipers after they sexually mature (about 10 years old) in late winter. Junipers with berries are females and, therefore, do not produce pollen. Instead, they make little cones that eventually ripen into fleshy blue cones with one, and sometimes two, seeds.The ripe fruits are ravaged by numerous critters, most notably the American robin and cedar waxwing, and then dropped all over the Hill Country so they can make more cedars. When the fruits of the year before begin to ferment in winter, it is not uncommon to see white-tailed deer continue to munch the fruits even after you approach and smaller critters, like birds, literally fall off the trees in drunken merriment.
Just before releasing pollen, male Ashe junipers will appear painted burnt-gold. Each pollen capsule houses copious amounts of pollen. A single Ashe juniper can produce several pounds of pollen. This pollen has been known to coat a driveway so thick in pollen, that car tire leave their tracks. Sometimes pollen clouds are so dense that newcomers call the fire department to report burning trees. Other times the golden clouds just hang over Lake Travis.
Once airborne, the pollen seeks the conelets of female Ashe junipers. Our Hill Country winds can carry the lightweight pollen hundreds of miles to reach every allergy sufferer. Rainy and humid days help decrease the pollen. A 1998 Statesman article reported that one humid day had a 688 pollen count. Whereas, two days later, when the weather turned dry, the pollen count rose to 1605.
After observing most pollen induced allergens originate from non-native plants and opportunistic plants, Willis and Degler wrote in a 1939 University of Texas publication on cedar fever, "Hayfever is nature's reply to man's destructive and wasteful exploitation of natural resources just as much as is soil erosion, wind erosion, and floods...in her more subtle mood the answer is hayfever." The question is, are our cedar fever sufferings our own doing?
The fact that junipers now grow so thick can be attributed mostly to our past and current tendency to destroy the land. Regardless of this fact, just about everyone who suffers the agony of cedar fever hates Ashe junipers. It does not matter that other problematic, airborne pollens originate from grasses, oaks, and wildflowers, it is the cedars that must go. Another Statesman article read, "Cedar fever had reduced me to a leaky, watery-eyed, sniffly mess. I was ready to go out and cut down all the cedar trees myself, environmentalism be damned." However, as Sharpe also wrote, "Physically and philosophically, cedar defines Central Texas...The obsession with nostrums and the wild talk about eradicating the mountain cedar miss a perverse but essential point: cedar fever is part of being a Texan.
Cedar Fever Remedies
So what can you do if plagued with the fever? There are as many treatments for cedar fever as there are ways to describe the fever. Every winter feverish desperados scavenge doctor offices and drug stores for over-the-counter drugs, such as Chlor-Trimeton, Dimetapp, Tavist-D and NasalCrom and prescriptions for Hismanal, Seldane and Claritin. For those who don't want drug induced grogginess or hyperactivity, try herbs. Some good herbal remedies used for treating cedar fever are Insure Herbal and astragalus.
There is an old saying that the remedy for any ailment can be found within the vicinity of that which caused the ailment. In the case of cedar fever, the remedy is the tree. Old-timers ward off cedar fever by chewing 2-4 juniper berries per day, starting a month before and continuing through cedar fever season. The berries taste like pine with rosemary. The berries are an excellent diuretic. Do not eat them if you have bladder problems or you are pregnant.
The berry preventative could be viewed as something that helps the body adapt to an allergen. Once adapted, the body's natural defenses will no longer trigger the allergic reaction. This is the premise of allergy shots. Getting shots for 4-5 years builds immunity for most fever sufferers and can last 20 years. Dick Stanley, in a August 1995 Statesman, reported that folks with heart troubles and using beta-blocker drugs should avoid shots.
Allergena Zone 5 by Progena is similar to allergy shots but is taken orally. It contains pollen extracts of our beloved Ashe juniper and every other airborne pollen in Central Texas. Drops of the extract placed under the tongue are absorbed into the bloodstream. Dr. Robb Kaufman with Progena said two out of three people respond favorably to Zone 5. Since the product has been around for 14 years, that means 14 years of results. Although Zone 5 is available at Whole Foods and Sunharvest, Progena targets health care professionals. Barry Hamrick, an registered massage therapist in Austin, recommends Zone 5 to his patients with favorable results. He says patients should start using Zone 5 two to three weeks before cedar fever season begins. "But," he said, "you need to take the drops with great discipline. Most folks want a quick fix and just take the drops as they need them." If a patient does not strictly adhere to the required number of drops that need to be taken every day, then they will mostly likely get cedar fever. In that case, Zone 5 would just be used to improve cedar fever symptons, not to avoid it altogether.
A final juniper remedy involes inhaling a steaming infusion of cedar leaves. In 1977, Dr. Robert Adams reported in a Missouri Botanical Gardens publication Ashe juniper oil was 75% camphor. The presence of camphor explains why people inhale the steam to open and soothe nasal passages.
A Native Texan It is
A Revelation
"Cedars are not native."
I first heard those words 5 years ago. While planning for a parking lot at an Austin landscape architecture firm, I suggested that we retain the thick cover of existing cedars between the lot and the street. My co-worker disagreed and told me to take out the "damn cedars." I explained the logic for retaining the trees as a visual screen. He agreed with the need for a vegetated screen, but that we needed to replace the cedars with another evergreen planting. I was baffled. My co-worker seemed to exhibit no logic whatsoever, so I pressed on. Finally, he exclaimed with the incredulity of one who cannot fathom why you do not know what they know, "Because they're not native, that's why!"
What, not native? Now I was incredulous one. The cedar, this tree that has been in my memories since the summers of my childhood spent in the Texas Hill Country, was not native? I instantly envisioned my horseback rides through cedars, hours spent sketching cedar fences and trees, and camp fire songs with friends around crackling, aromatic cedar bonfires. Could my co-worker know that, if the tree were not native, this would fraudulate my fondest children memories? Sensing my disbelief, my co-worker shoved a book before me. There, in black and white, the city of Austin had juniper species, a.k.a cedars, listed as non-native in Appendix F of the environmental code book. Unwillingly, I joined the ranks of the cedar myth-makers club.
A few weeks later, while undergoing trail guide training at the Wild Basin, our group starting talking about the cedar. I asked if they were native. Mike Kaspar, the Wild Basin director at that time, rolled his eyes and replied, "Elizabeth, these cedars are native. And they are not really cedars. They are junipers...Ashe junipers. I was confused and my interest was piqued. Being the stubborn mule that I am and feeling too naive, I starting to research the information about the tree. I had to know the facts. Little did I know I would soon be writing an entire book about the twisted tales of the Ashe juniper.
Crazy Texas Tall Tales
Just about everyone I came across while doing my research has had something bad to say about the Ashe juniper. For the most part, there are only misconceptions. But when it comes to the issue of whether or not the tree is native, the Texan urge to tell a tale or two just grows and grows.
Most people say the tree is not native because the cattle brought it up from Mexico. When and exactly how the trees arrived with the cattle, well, no seems to know. But, know this: any weathered rancher will tell you cows don't eat the trees, so, obviously, the seeds have not been dispersed by cow paddies. Some folks do have theories. The most common theory it is that the juniper seeds got stuck in the hair of the cattle in Mexico and did not fall until they reached Texas soil. Mind you, the seeds of these junipers have no stickburs. But, for the moment, let's say they did have stickburs. Can this dispersal technique explain the presence of Ashe junipers in the Ozark Mountains? As Brother Daniel Lynch once chuckled at a 1995 Weed People Society meeting, "How do you think the cows got the seeds into the mountains in Arkansas?"
A tale that tells the reverse is that the seeds came from the Ozarks to us here in the Hill Country. I came across an old-timer at a computer parts store on 6th Street who gave me this tale. He patiently, and I must add, very seriously, explained that when the settlers drove their wagons through Arkansas on their way to Texas, they picked up branches of Ashe juniper in their wagon wheels. Somehow, those same branches made it with seeds intact all the way to the Hill Country and no one ever bothered taking them out of the wheels.
Another misplaced myth was first presented to me by one of my neighbors. After scuffing her toe in the dirt for a moment, she finally blurted out that although she knew I was writing a book on the cedar, she was thinking about cutting her cedars down. She said she had "been told" that Ashe junipers were not native because they had originally come from Europe. I thought for a moment, and then laughed. I explained our mountain cedar was being confused with the salt cedar. The salt cedar, which is a Tamarix and not a juniper, originated in the Mediteranean region. Years ago, Europeans brought several Tamarix species to the southwestern United States so they could have fast growing shade trees that could grow in saline conditions. Today, the salt cedar is a deep-rooted tree reknowned for using tremendous amounts of water. It is currently listed by the Nature Conservancy as one of the worst ten exotic invader plants in North America.
The most entertaining tall tale came from a person that had just listened to one of my lectures on the juniper. He told me, with a serious face, that the government seeded the tree from helicopters years ago. I asked him if the helicopters had been black. The most recent tall tale was revealed to me by the current caretaker of the Wild Basin, Mike Powers. While taking a couple on a guided tour through the Basin, the inevitable question came, "Why do you not remove your cedars? We heard that they are not native and that they are originally from the Andes Mountains in Peru and that their real name is Juniperus andeii." Although Mike restrained himself from laughing and explained with infinite patience that our cedar is native, he could not wait for the couple to leave so he could rush to the phone to relay to me the latest bit of folklore.
In any case, Texans never tire of contriving tale after tale as to why the Ashe juniper could not possibly be native to the Hill Country. Yet, I rarely hear people propose the simplest of theories of tree dispersal: that birds spread the seed of the Ashe juniper. Birds love to eat the fruits...and then they poop them elsewhere. Mind you, the robins did most of this dispersal, but they only spread it within the confines of its current range. How do we know the robins did not initially bring the seeds from the heart of Mexico, the Ozarks, the Andes Mountains or Europe? Because fossil pollens show junipers have been growing here since the last ice age.
The Undisputable Proof: Ice Age Pollen
In the September 1995 publication of Quaternary Research, Stephen Hall and Salvatore Valastro produced a report on the southern great plains vegetation during the last ice age. A Hill Country site that produced juniper pollens dating back to the late ice age was included as part of the report. This site, located in northwestern Bexar County, is called the Friesenhahn Cave.
It has taken a long time to find juniper pollens because pollens, in general, do not last well in the alkaline conditions of limestone. Peat deposits are typically the places where pollens are preserved best, and peat just is not common in the Hill Country. The pollens at Friesenhahn Cave were found in lacustrine clays, a medium which is moderately good for pollen preservation.
Our Lost Junipers
To learn if the pollen grains of juniper found were truly of our Ashe juniper, I turned to the facinating study by Dr. Robert Adams, of Baylor University, and Zanoni. In the early 1970's Dr. Adams and Zanoni trekked across Texas and to the Sierra del Carmen, Arbunkle and Ozark Mountains to study chemical variations among Ashe junipers and other junipers. From the samples collected, they compiled the chemical make-up of the juniper oils. These chemicals, known more specifically as terpenoids, allow a detailed comparison between different species since each species has its own chemical fingerprint. That way, Adams and Zanoni could know without a doubt which species was which, since juniper morphology can vary.
As they completed their work, Adams and Zanoni discovered that the chemical make-up of Ashe junipers in the Hill Country was identical to the chemical make-up of the Arbunkle and Ozark Ashe junipers, even though all three populations are isolated from one another. Normally, after many years have gone by, such isolated populations would differentiate into distinct populations. We have all read about this in Charles Darwin's analysis of the Galapagos Island. It's the basis of Darwin's theory of evolution. Since these isolated populations of junipers did not exhibit signs of differentiation, Adams concluded these populations could not have been separated for too long. How long? Well, it only takes a couple of hundred years for a species to differentiate. Why the three populations were separated, he did not appear to know. Although Adams proposed that birds could have easily spread the seed of the Ashe juniper to the Ozarks and Arbunkles within a few hundred year span, I still find it odd that the birds did not spread the seeds continuously so that there would have been no segregation. Perhaps the birds did spread the seed continuously, but the seeds did not take or the seedlings did not survive. The spread of the seed beyond the Hill Country was confirmed by Faegan B. White Wolf, a Tonkawa, in a 1998 email. He wrote, "...Mountain Juniper started encroaching on Central Texas in the early 1700's... It was spread from the mountains in the west by birds who ate the berries for sustenance and defecated the seeds where they traveled." This could be when the Ashe junipers also made it to Oklahoma and Arkansas. The "mountains in the west" would be the Hill Country and perhaps the southern portion of the Western Cross Timbers.
What I found extremely interesting was that the Sierra del Carmen junipers and several discrete juniper populations within the Hill Country (upper Nueces and near New Braunfels) had a terpenoid makeup that was different from the other Ashe junipers. Adams and Zanoni determined that these smaller populations were "older" and that the "newer," more abundant Ashe junipers were more evolved. The two scientists used three techniques to distinguish the ancestral junipers from the advanced. First, ancestral Ashe juniper leaf glands are ovaloid; the advanced glands, circular. Second, they found that the advanced Ashe junipers had more slender foliage and a better defined central trunk. The third technique involves a comparision of the camphor level found in the leaves. Not only did they find the "newer" Ashe junipers had 75% camphor whereas the "older" junipers had only 60% camphor, but they realized these newer Ashe junipers sported more camphor than any other North American juniper.
So what do these different camphor amounts and morphological traits mean? Adams writes, "although the ancestral population [at New Braunfels] is practically surrounded by the divergent populations, the ancestral genetic make-up accumulated at least 10,000 B.P. still persists," This means the ancestral populations have been growing in the Hill Country at least since the last Ice Age. Adams and Zanoni proposed that all of our North American junipers have been present in North America at least since the mid-Teritary.
During the Ice Age, the climate of the Hill Country went from dry and xeric to moist and cool. The ancestral Ashe junipers could not compete very well in the resulting climate. Instead, pines, maples and tall grass prairies spread into the Hill Country and most junipers retreated further south. A few small Ashe juniper populations managed to remain in the Hill Country, not unlike the Lost Maples of today. Instead of becoming recluse canyon dwellers like the Big Tooth Maples, these heat loving ancestral junipers remained on a few of the steeper, south-facing slopes and became, in effect, remnant patches of "lost junipers." After the ices retreated and the climate in the Hill Country once again became xeric and dry, the junipers spread outward from remnant areas, such as the Nueces and New Braunfels populations, and northward from the Mexico populations.
The Adaptations of an Endangered Bird
The golden-cheek warbler relies solely on the bark of older Ashe junipers, along with spider webs, to make its nests. This dependence did not happen overnight. It would have taken at least 500 years to evolve this dependency.
What the Spanish Trailblazers Saw
When the Spanish came to Texas, so did the cattle. It would therefore seem logical that if the cattle were the first to bring junipers to the Hill Country, then the Spanish trailblazers would not have seen junipers. This was not the case. Several diary and official reports, mentioned that junipers were already present in the Hill Country. The Spanish did not explore the Hill Country until the mid-1700's because their time and money was spent on maintaining their strongholds against French advancment from East Texas. However, by the mid-1700's, the impact of attacks and raids by the Lipan Apaches, who were perterbed that the Spanish presence interrupted their journeys to the coast, finally gained the attention of the Spanish. Intent on "civilizing" the wild indians with Christianity and also finding the fabled silver mines of the San Saba region, trail blazers, and then missionaries, were set forth into the Hill Country.
In 1691, Teran and Massanet, blazed a brief trail into the Hill Country. They had only gone as far as the northwestern corner of Bexar County before they began reporting dense growths of mountain cedar (Hatcher). Years later in 1756, Miranda journeyed into the Hill Country. His writings, translated by Roderick Patten, revealed the common presence of junipers. Between the Little Blanco River near present day Twin Sisters and the Guadalupe River, Miranda wrote, "In all of this region there are no commodities nor anything except good cedar and oak timber, and on the Rio de Alarcon [Guadalupe river] already mentioned there are cypress groves." Then, near present day Johnson City, he wrote, "Crossing many swollen creeks and thickets of cedar and oak timber, at a distance of eight leagues we arrived at the Arroyo de los Pedernales." Another journal entry of Honey Creek near Pack Saddle Mountain, which is interesting for its mention of mesquite, reads, "[The box canyon] "has good grasslands...of the conveniences, not the least are the large and nearby thickets of mesquite and oak, very useful for charcoal. For house building and other necessities needed by haciendas for extracting silver, there is much cedar, nogal [pecan or walnut], cottonwood, and oak timber..."
The Señor Marqués de Rubî expedition, in1767, travelled from Mexico to the San Saba Mission site to the Lost Maples region to San Antonio and then home to Mexico. The purpose of the expedition was to explore the limits of the Mexican northern frontier in order to rethink defensive tactics and needs. The Texas State Historical Association reprinted the translated diary in Imaginery Kingdoms. Two passages reference the Ashe junipers. The first was written while they were near the headwaters of the South Llano River. Rubî wrote, "the river has thick growths of pecans, junipers, tascates, and other trees large enough to build with." Then, as they approached the headwaters of the Nueces River, he recorded, "We travelled 10 leagues without seeing anything worthy of note, until coming to hills that were thickly covered with wild cedar."
One of Oldest Hill Country Abodes
Only two Spanish missions were ever established in the Hill Country for the Lipan Apaches. The first mission was the San Saba. That one lasted until the Comanches, aided by several other Indian tribes, arrived and massacred every European in sight. The second mission was safely located by a Lipan chief on the Upper Nueces River near present day __. The remains of this mission, named Mission San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz , was excavated and studied by an archaeologist, Curtis D. Tunnell, in 1969.
Tunnell's evidence found that the roof beams consisted of juniper and oak and the cross pieces consisted mostly of juniper. As was typical of Spanish construction back then, only native materials that could easily be obtained were used. And, only the larger, longer pieces of wood were used as roof beams. Apparently, the "wild cedars" noted by the Rubî expedition in the same region were not too scarce or small.
One 1838 Land Survey
The property in this survey that mentions the presence of cedars was on the Guadalupe River about 25 miles northwest of New Braunfels. The surveyor starts the survey at the property's southeast corner which is the property line at the river. The last leg of the river portion of the 1838 survey heads:"North 83o East 383 varas [a Spanish measurement equalivalent to 2.7-3.6 feet] to a stonemound on hillside from which a Cedar, 10 inches in diameter, bears North 100 varas and a Live Oak 10 inches in diameter bears North 44o West 40 varas. Thence North 3650 varas to a stonemound in prairie, near the Southbase of a hill. Thence East 1344 varas to a stonemound, from which a dead stumped Live Oak, 10 inches in diameter bears South 34o East 130 varas. Thence South 5800 varas to the place of Beginning. Growth: Cypress, Cottonwood, Live Oak & Cedar.
One Non-Native Myth Pusher
Going back to the first time I heard the tree was not native, I decided to call the City of Austin to find out why they had indicated in Appendix F that the Ashe juniper was not native. After about a week of phone tags I located the gentleman who had been reponsible for the non-native designation for juniperus species. He immediately said they are not native. I then came back with two pages of quotes and facts that proved undeniably that the tree is native. Finally, the man caved in and quietly said, "Okay, we know they are native but we just don't want anyone to think they are." What a revelation!! He further added that junipers were listed as not native because the city did not want anyone to plant the tree since there were so many. Okay, that last part sounds fine, I said, but what about the fact that you have now given every developer and rancher in the area another justification to go out and chop down the tree?
I do not know if the ordinances are responsible or not, but an alarming number of developers, realtors, architects and landscape professionals believe that the juniper is not native. Just call any realtor in the phone book and ask them if they think the tree is native. If they believe it is native, at least two out of three realtors will still have some reason to eradicate the cedars. This means that the idea of clearing cedars is being pushed upon every new home or property buyer in the Hill Country. I walked into the backyard of one of my new clients to see a freshly cut stump of a rather large Ashe juniper. I asked why they had cut it, especially since it had served as a visual screen between them and their neighbor's window. They said the contractor had told them to cut it since the tree uses so much water and it was not native. The contractor told them this while he was laying the St. Augustine grass which definitely uses more water than junipers!
The Hill Country was Not a Vast Ocean of Grass
It was a Land with Old-Growth Cedar Brakes
I have many, many more quotes!! They will appear in my final book.
"As the landscape becomes more heterogeneous and patchy, with greatvariation in soil depths, rock outcrops and increase in the topographic relief, the system becomes more favorable for woody plant establishment and persistence...This patchiness favors woody establishment in that it reduces competition from herbaceous plants, provides safe sites for seed germination and seedling establishment and reduces fine fuel amounts and continuity which reduces fire intensity and hence impact of fire on the woody plants...Some areas, especially on the southeastern Edwards Plateau, are not conducive to repeated fires because of the highly variable topography and fine fuel discontnuity...the landscape was a dynamic mosaic with local patches of woody plants expanding and contracting through time...From an ecological perspective Ashe juniper has always, at least for the past several thousand years, been a major component of the Hill Country and to a much lesser extent the western divided portion of the EdwardsPlateau. It has clearly been greatly altered in its landscape locations,stand age and growth structure during the past 150 years." Dr. Fred Smeins in 96 symposium "Environmental and Land Use Changes: A Long Term Perspective."
The Hill Country Vegetation as seen by Trailblazers,Explorers, Texas Rangers and Surveyors Before the 1880's
The shredding of the bark does not occur for 30-60 years.
The shredding bark is very soft and pliable. This makes it an excellent
candidate as a bird and small mammal nesting material. In fact, the bark
is so favored by the golden cheek warbler, that the bird has come to rely
only on that bark to build its nests. Another character of the bark is
its cedarwood fragrance. Cedarwood oil helps deter insects. Who knows,
perhaps the animals know this.