Saving Junipers on the North York Moors             

Early on when I was trying to assess how many juniper bushes/trees remained in the northern part of the Park, a keeper on the Danby Estate mentioned to me that he had seen some older Estate maps which showed ‘Yew Crag Beck’ (rather than ‘Ewe Crag’) leading northwards from Danby. I next saw the words ‘Yew Grain’ on a map showing the head of Great Fryup Dale, so went to explore it. I already knew that the word ‘Grain’ on old maps had nothing to do with cereals. Rather, it had a common derivation with the ‘grain’ in wood, coming to mean a fork in either a stream or pannier-way, for example. What I found at Yew Grain was indeed a fork in the track, marked by a very old Juniper bush. Juniper used to be known as ‘Yew’, so Yew Crag was clearly ‘Juniper Crag’ – trees, not sheep! The original Ordnance Surveyor must have noted down what he thought he heard from a local person.

The reasons for the decline of juniper in the North York Moors, and elsewhere, are probably complex. If you would like to read the paper on the Juniper project, see below.

If anyone would like to propagate juniper plants, either from seed or cuttings, could they please get in touch. 

Peter Woods

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