Quick-growing, low, spreading evergreen shrub. Foliage green becoming purplish brown. Branchlets in flattened sprays. Leaves scale-like to about 3 mm long in similar lateral and facial pairs, strongly pointed, with an often spreading, incurved tip and a gland on the back. Male and female plants usually separate. Male cones solitary, terminal. Female cones small, 3-6 mm long, spherical; scales 2-4, 1 fertile with 1 seed. Seed wingless.
Grows naturally in montane rocky sites of E Siberia especially near Vladivostock. A little known genus botanically but grown ornamentally as a dwarf ground-cover with colourful foliage.
Pacific Russia.
Very similar to Juniperus but with woody cones. Foliage colouring purplish-brown; leaves long-pointed, spreading and with incurving tips; cones small with 2-4 scales; seed wingless.
VIC: Geelong (Bot. Gds).
Source: (1995). Cupressaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 1, Ferns, conifers & their allies. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.