Question for Swampy - weird spruce

[slowzuki]

Swampy,  a friend and I where walking his fence line cutting up blow downs when we spotted an unusual tree.  He called back to me to look at this weird hawthorn, it was covered in thorns as well as blunted not quite as developed thorns.  I looked it over and it looks like one of those witches nest things in a spruce, ie it has an abnornally high number of small branches with tight spacing.

Looking it over there were spruce needles still attached.   The thorns were sharp and quite smooth, like hawthorn, not like wild apple trees, and it was growing in a area with plenty of hawthorn so I'm a bit confused.

Did this spruce have some kind of genetic damage?  Its under a foot of snow or I would go get a picture of it!

[SwampDonkey]

It's not a spruce with adelgid is it? Prickly looking cones on the branches, I think they are damaged buds. Or it could be a common Juniper Juniperus communis, I've seen them naturalize old fields back behind the Douglas area where I used to cross country ski when in college. Their needles are sharp. Very common in Ontarios Boreal forest region. Some up there may have started them for Christmas trees or ornamentals and the seed escaped with help from birds. The fruit is berry like. It's the most widespread woody plant of the temperate forest of NA, Europe and Asia. The tree takes on many forms and requires separate male and female trees to propagate.

A possibility? You can Google around for some photos, but I think it's a possibility.