Sadly Britain’s rarest native tree species, reduced to only 13 plants in existence in the wild, endemic to Cornwall, on Cornwall’s Lizard peninsular. Trebrown Nurseries pioneered the species recovery program for Juniperus communis subsp. hemisphaerica back in the early 1980s by collecting wild seed and raising 10 plants in ex-situ cultivation. We are now harvesting seed off our ex-situ plants and growing them on in our nurseries.
The Cornish Juniper is quite unlike our other native Juniper (Juniperus communis). Cornish Juniper is a ground-hugging prostrate species, which has the soft, recurving blunt needles similar to some of the Asian species.
The Cornish population was first recorded in 1871 where it grew in abundance. The Cornish coastal habitat is identified as NVC: Erica vagans – Ulex europaeus Coastal Heath and Erica vagans-Schoenus nigricans Coastal Heath. The population in Cornwall has been greatly reduced and is now classified as critically endangered according to the IUCN Red Listing handbook and is also a BAP priority species. We identified four individuals of the wild population as female with six males and three plants of unknown sex with no noted evidence of seed regeneration and seedling production on the sites we studied.
The objective being that we create new populations, several plants, both male and female, together in Cornwall (and maybe Devon) on coastal cliffs, as the species recovery program in the wild.
We are not directly listing the plants we have on this website. Although we have them for sale. Instead we expect direct enquires for them, where we will consider your proposals towards the species recovery program. We are open to hearing your ideas.
