))
Being unfamiliar with the female flower of our J. ashei, I set out in January (2000) to see what it looks like, given that the pollen cones were mature at this same period. To my surprise I found several trees with both pollen cones and ripe berries, both sexes being present within inches of each other on the same branch, as in the above image. [The fruit has ruptured under the pressure of the scanner cover.] These apparently monoecious trees were covered with pollen cones with only a few fruits. No trees which were primarily female in sex were found to also have pollen cones.
In the case of a mature (previous year's) fruit adjacent to male cones,
the monoecious status of a tree may not be clear, since it is possible
for individual trees of some Juniperus species to change their
sex from year to year. [Personal communication from Robert P. Adams.]
But subsequently I was able to verify that this is not the case
with our population - the same trees showing both berries and pollen
cones on the same branch in successive years.
