Red Junipers and Bradford Pears

     Red juniper and Bradford pear trees are common in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  They have several traits in common and beauties exclusive to themselves.  Both species flourish better in ample sunlight.  Both are common along country roads and in abandoned fields.  These plants produce patches of themselves that are up to an acre large.  And they are scattered by seeds in bird droppings and feed a variety of rodents and small birds.
     Red junipers are native to this area, coniferous and in the juniper genus of trees.  Their red wood is used to make delightfully fragrant cedar chests and closets.  But these sturdy conifers are also attractive in the wild, because of their evergreen needles and lovely, light-blue fleshy cones that resemble berries.  Each cone looks like a berry, but upon close examination one can see the faint lines of the soft scales that protect tiny seeds inside. 
     Some junipers are loaded with those decorative cones in autumn and through the succeeding winter.  Mice, squirrels, flocks of American robins and cedar waxwings, and groups of eastern bluebirds and yellow-rumped warblers, and individual northern mockingbirds are some of the creatures that eat many of those cones through fall and winter.  Those beautiful birds digest the pulp of the cones, but pass many of the seeds in their droppings, thereby spreading red junipers across the countryside when some of those seeds sprout.       
     Red junipers are also good cover for birds the year around.  Several kinds of birds, including dark-eyed juncos, mourning doves, robins, bluebirds, yellow-rumps, certain hawks and owls, and other species spend winter nights in the shelters of junipers.  And mourning doves, blue jays, gray catbirds, northern mockingbirds, northern cardinals, chipping sparrows, song sparrows and other kinds of small birds raise young in nests in junipers.
     Bradford pears are non-native, ornamental trees that are planted along streets and on lawns because of the multitudes of attractive white flowers they produce in April.  After being pollinated by wind and insects, the fertilized blooms produce small, brown fruits that are eaten by the critters listed above through fall and winter.  Again the birds digest the pulp, but pass many of the seeds over the landscape.  In that way the deciduous Bradford pear trees have escaped from captivity in great numbers and colonized acres of abandoned fields, pastures and roadsides.  And in October and November their glossy leaves turn bright red or maroon-red, making those deserted fields and so on quite attractive.  This type of pear tree, though an alien, is really quite striking and spectacular in autumn.  And it feeds a variety of wildlife.      
     Look for red junipers and Bradford pears in your home area.  They really are wonderful trees to experience through autumn and winter.