Utah juniper
The shaggy-barked evergreen of pinyon-juniper country, sometimes called Utah cedar.
Utah juniper is a small evergreen conifer with scale-like leaves and shreddy bark. Its female cones turn blue and look like berries. At Arches it grows in desert shrub, pinyon-juniper and streamside communities.
The National Park Service says the oldest Utah juniper in the state has been aged at more than 1,275 years. With two-needle pinyon, it forms the pinyon-juniper woodland that the park service calls the dominant plant community at Arches.
Seeing it
Tell it from pinyon by the leaves: juniper has scales, pinyon has needles in pairs.
Places the sources name
More plants · Red-rock desert
Grasses
Indian ricegrass
Utah's state grass, a drought-tolerant bunchgrass found on most of the state's rangeland.