Is juniper berries vegetarian-compatible?

Watch for

• Species identity is the one hard safety line.Juniperus communis is the culinary juniper; savin juniper (Juniperus sabina) and several ornamental garden junipers are toxic and are not food, so foraged berries need identifying before they go in the pot.
• Juniper is a traditional emmenagogue, and the long-standing herbal convention is to avoid it in pregnancy.That caution is aimed at medicinal doses, teas and juniper oil rather than the two or three berries in a braise, but it is the reason juniper appears on pregnancy avoid-lists.
• Herbal practice also keeps juniper preparations to short courses and advises caution with existing kidney disease.Again this is about capsules and essential oil, not a spice jar.
• Its salicylate grade of C is the only non-clean mark here, and that grade is a dried-spice default shared byte for byte with a block of other seasonings rather than a juniper-specific measurement.Aromatic dried spices do tend to sit moderate on salicylate lists, so treat C as plausible and unconfirmed, not as a finding.
• If gin is a problem for you but crushed juniper in food is not, the alcohol is the far more likely explanation.The botanical carries the flavour, not the reaction.