Used as foundation, hedge, screen or accent plants. Use on both sides of entrances. Makes nice contrast with other gray foliage plants. Covers bareness of deciduous trees during dormancy. Tall, slender shrub.
Cultivars range from dwarf to rounded to globe shapes.
Branches are erect and spreading, with thin, scaly bark. Branches tend to turn up at ends. Needlelike juvenile leaves and scale-like mature foliage and branchlets, flattened in one plane. Bright green to yellow-green. Ojibwa Indians are said to have made soup from the inner bark of the young twigs of this tree.