IN THE latest of our new series of columns to celebrate the county's mountain landscape and all that grows wild in the county, Friends of the Lake District's Martin Varley looks at juniper.

JUNIPER is well known as the essential flavouring for one of the country's favourite spirits gin. It is one of Cumbria's few evergreen flora of the fells and can be seen all year round.

There are particular good examples on Scout Scar and Whitbarrow, where this easily recognisable spiny shrub grows to about one or two metres high. It is its aromatic, blue-grey berries which are used to flavour gin, although it is many years since British distillers have used native juniper.

The berries add flavour to many foods and drinks besides gin - their bitter-sweet taste goes particularly well with stronger meats and game. Their medicinal benefits were first recorded as far back as 1550BC. A papyrus from Ancient Egypt cites juniper berries as an ingredient for a medicine to treat tape worms and juniper is still widely used by the pharmaceutical industry today.

It provides an ingredient for nearly 300 products mostly associated with diuretic, stomach and digestive disorders. In Europe, it was used as a protective herb.

Folklore maintained that juniper planted beside the front door would bar a witch from entering as she could only get past by counting all its needles correctly! It was also added to love mixtures and carried by men to increase their potency.

While widespread in Lake District, the species is in poor health. Today, most stands are even-aged and nearing the end of their lifespan with overgrazing having limited regeneration.

The decline is so serious that juniper is highlighted in the Cumbria Biodiversity Action Plan, which sets out proposals to conserve and enhance the county's most vulnerable species. The plan aims to expand existing areas of juniper by at least six hectares by 2015.

If it works, perhaps Cumbria gin could be a local product of the future.