About two years ago, a small evergreen tree started growing next to a fence. The first year, I thought it was a pine tree and figured I'd pull it out later when I got around to it. The second year it became clear this was not a pine and at first I thought it was a cryptomeria volunteer because of the sharpness of the needles and similar branching. But the thing is this plant is blue in colour, sort of like the 'grey owl' junipers that are popular down here of which I have several in my garden. A few months ago, I noticed another one sprouted up about 200 metres away in a disturbed natural area which got me thinking this could be something native but it doesn't look like the native juniperus Virginiana, except for the blueish cultivars and even then, the foliage doesn't match. So I'm thinking this might be a Chinese juniper resulting from the dispersed seeds of the hybrid juniper varieties that are present in the area but only one photo that I saw online of Chinese juniper matches the foliage of these plants. The rest look like the countless cultivars. Here's my pics. I don't have much to go on here, just some foliage and some bark. The tree is 2-3 feet tall at this point. The needles are extremely sharp. You don't want to brush up against this. In fact I was going to transplant if it wasn't something invasive but it's just so sharp that I don't think that's going to happen now. Any help identifying it is appreciated. The photos don't show the blue colour accurately. For scale, that board in some of the photos is a fence picket.
Yep, a juniper; could well be Chinese Juniper. Chinese Juniper seedlings always have needle-leaves like this when young; they get adult scale leaves as they grow older, with a lot of individual variation in how soon and how completely they get adult foliage. Some cultivars are selected for permanent retention of juvenile foliage, some other cultivars have 100% adult foliage, and some have a mixture throughout their life.
Thanks for your reply. I didn't know the adult leaves would vary so much. Now that I know what it is, I'll just remove it.
