armetisius
Chumono
Okay a cone is a scaly structure that protects a hard coated seed while it matures and "opens"--actually is forced open by the ripening seed within its "scales"--when mature. However a drupe has a skin over a fleshy layer surrounding a hard coated seed or multiple seeds. All arising from a single flowering structure. Most identifiable being cherries, peaches, and avocados and grapes. Now there is no allowance for the stringiness of the fleshy coating i.e. the difference between a prune and a grape. However, that being said, botanist have argued for decades--read that as centuries more or less--that a "fleshy cone" is not a cone at all but a drupe. Back in the 17th and 18th century some even argued that junipers were some sort of transition genus between the conifers and fruiting plants. Don't recall ever seeing a Juniper "berry" split and "drop" seed. As is evidenced by your "string of berries". Now I will not argue this any further because I don't have a government grant and another forty years to end up on one side of the fence or another. However if you have somehow come up with the emphatic determination please contact the nearest taxonomist; there is a Phd. in that one. But in the sense of a true scaled cone-as seen in the attached pictures-it doesn't happen on any member of the Juniperus genus.
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