• Rounded clumps of foliage can be seen throughout the tree canopy
• These clumps are witches brooms, or clusters of many small branches
• Swollen elongate areas with rough cracked bark can be seen on infected branches without witches brooms
• Orange jelly forms on needles and from cracks in infected bark during wet spring weather
• Common on Rocky Mountain juniper, eastern red cedar and prostrate juniper

[click link below for photos]

This rust produces three types of lesions—trunk, branch, and broom ... The open type of broom with normal needles found about Washington [D.C.] was quite different in aspect and much larger than the dense brooms with juvenile needles found on Juniperus virginiana L. var. crebra Fernald & Griscom from Massachusetts. In the material examined from Washington [D.C.] and vicinity no telia or lesions were found on young twigs or among the needles, but they were confined to the limbs and branches with heartwood. The living bark down to the sapwood under and adjacent to the telia was stained a golden-yellow during the maturation and gelatinization period ... due to small yellowish globules in the rust hyphae ...