Juniperus macrocarpaSm.

Large-fruited Juniper

WFO wfo-0000355640 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Juniperus macrocarpa, photographed by Grete Pasch
fig. a Grete Pasch, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-31 / obs. 202248961

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 18 botanical countries

Regions where Juniperus macrocarpa is native: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Türkiye, Albania, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Kriti, NW. Balkan Pen., Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaLibyaMoroccoTunisiaTürkiyeAlbaniaBulgariaCorseFranceGreeceItalyKritiNW. Balkan Pen.SiciliaSpainTürkiye-in-Europe BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Juniperus macrocarpa, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Libya LBY
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN
Türkiye TUR ASIA-TEMPERATE

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 709 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low 5.6 °C 9.1 °C 11.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.8 °C 27.2 °C 30.5 °C
Annual rainfall 450 mm 662 mm 1,035 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 2 mm 30 mm 119 mm

It is barely found anywhere that freezes. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 709 research-grade observations of Juniperus macrocarpa that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 20 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Juniperus attica Orph.
  • Juniperus biasolettii Link
  • Juniperus communis var. macrocarpa (Sm.) Spach
  • Juniperus elliptica Carrière
  • Juniperus lobelii Guss.
  • Juniperus macrocarpa var. ellipsoidea Neilr.
  • Juniperus macrocarpa var. globosa Neilr.
  • Juniperus macrocarpa var. lobelii (Guss.) Parl.
  • Juniperus major Dioscorides ex Bubani
  • Juniperus neaboriensis P.Lawson ex Gordon
  • Juniperus oblongata Guss.
  • Juniperus oxycedrus subsp. macrocarpa (Sm.) Ball
  • Juniperus oxycedrus subsp. macrocarpa (Sm.) Neilr.
  • Juniperus oxycedrus var. globosa (Neilr.) Rouy
  • Juniperus oxycedrus var. lobelii (Parl.) Rouy
  • Juniperus oxycedrus var. macrocarpa (Sm.) Silba
  • Juniperus sphaerocarpa Antoine
  • Juniperus umbilicata Godr.
  • Juniperus willkommii Antoine
  • Sabina phoenicea var. lobelii (Guss.) Antoine

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.