When we bought the land, it had hundreds of invasive small (2-5 feet tall) Ashe junipers what had been open grassland. R- cut nearly all of them out. Ashe juniper is not a horrible bad trash tree, utterly useless, as some claim, but like any plant it will spread out of its normal habitat if what should be there is destroyed. In this case, severe overgrazing had taken the native mid- and tall-grasses down to the nubs, and the juniper moved in. Some juniper is of use--as windbreak and as food and habitat source for some wildlife. I've seen flights of monarchs on migration sheltering in it when a wet norther stops them; various birds and small mammals eat the juniper berries, other birds strip the older trees' bark to use in building nests, etc. But too much juniper is too much, so we thin and cull and...near Christmas...go looking for one that's not ball-shaped but pointier for a Christmas tree.
This year's choice. Ashe juniper tends to rotund, so nice shaped ones are short
At this age, they have skinny trunks, so the big lopping shears took it off at the ground.
Unfortunately, we haven't found the tree stand that can deal with skinny trunks (most commercial trees now have thick trunks) so we're not sure how this little tree will be supported. I suppose we could screw an eye into the ceiling and hang it from there....
Removing some of the young Ashe junipers also fits in with our wildlife management program. I've taken out a lot of them with lopping shears myself, over on the west end where R- has chain-sawed a number of bigger ones to open up the grassy area there. We don't remove them in fencerows (except to repair/build fence when it's necessary) or in the woods areas.
The tree once decorated:
