Junipers are considered dioecious. The female or fruit- bearing flowers are all on one plant, while the pollen bearing male flowers are on another. Occasionally, you might find some junipers with both. Though the fruits are interesting to look at they do take energy from the tree. I usually pluck them when I have time.

Al

If light brown, they're the pollen cones. The seed cones are green, ripening purple

Resin

All Juniperus procumbens are male plants and if you are going to pinch out the cones you had better start in the last two weeks of August, because that is when they begin to develop.

Hasaki

They can't all be male, if they were the species would soon become extinct!

Resin

Hello Resin,
I believe there is reward/bet on anyone finding a J. procumbens female plant ;-]. I also believe that it may originally have been propagated from J. chinensis, obviously by the Japanese way back like 1860's or something. All these J. procumbens are propagated from cuttings.
But some plants listed/sold as J. procumbens are really a J. squamata cultivar. They look _very_ similar.

Hasaki

This is a pic from Bob Fincham's Coenosium Gardens comparing the two cultivars, J. squamata 'prostrata'[left] and J. procumbens 'nana'[right].

Hasaki

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:7720}}

I believe Hasaki is right. Cuttings are clones of the original plant. They have no parent plants.

From R P Adams (2004), Junipers of the World:

Juniperus procumbens (Sieb. ex Endl.) Miquel .... Dioecious. Shrubs procumbent. Trunk bark brown, exfoliating in plates .... Seed cones glaucous, greenish-tan when immature, glaucous, black when mature, subglobose, 8-9 mm in diam. Seeds (1-) 2-3 per cone, ca. 4 mm, ridged. .... Uses widely cultivated, cv. 'Nana' is very common. Distribution: south coast Japan, south and west coasts of Korea. Status: not threatened.

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Presumably only cv. 'Nana' is widespread in cultivation; if it is J. squamata misidentified, maybe the true species is not in cultivation at all. But it shouldn't be hard to find in Japan or Korea.

Resin