The sacred evergreen

It is the tree that shelters us: wizened yet robust, fragrant but fierce, with glass-thin needles and peeling bark, a living book in which folklore and nature are inscribed.

Juniper, cast as a protector in stories, has assaulted my senses on a steep chalky North Downs hillside. The tip of its tiny silver needle has attached itself to my finger, symbolic perhaps of how the tree is embedded into tradition and history.

The juniper knew Britain when mammoths trampled vegetation and it knows us, one might say, from the uses that we have found for it: our vices supported by the smokeless juniper wood fires once used for illicit whisky production and our fears embodied by doctors stuffing juniper berries in their masks while battling