Common juniper

Sahti, the traditional Finnish beer, is filtered through juniper twigs, and fragrant kataja wood is made into famous butter knives.

The common juniper is an evergreen shrub or small tree of very variable form – from prostrate plants on rocks to slender, columnar specimens several metres tall. It has sharp, awl-shaped needles in whorls of three, with a white stripe on the upper side. Plants are dioecious: on female plants, blue-black, bloomy “berries” ripen over two years – in fact they are fleshy cones. The berries are used to season game and sauerkraut and to flavour gin, and the hard, fragrant wood to make small objects.

Significance in the country

Juniper is essential for brewing sahti – a traditional farmhouse beer that is filtered through a layer of juniper twigs in a wooden trough called a kuurna. The hard, aromatic wood of the juniper is a favourite material of Finnish craftspeople, who make butter knives, spoons and boards from it.

Where it grows

Throughout the country – in dry pine forests, on rocks, pastures and coastal heathland, from the archipelagos of the south coast to Lapland, where it grows in a prostrate form.

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