RHAMNUS CALIFORNICA AND ITS ALLIES. 



BY KATHARINE BRANDEGEE, 



These shrubs, known locally on the Pacific Coast as "Wild Cof- 

 fee," "Cascara Sagrada," and "Shittim Wood," have been subject 

 to many vicissitudes in name as well as description. The northern 

 J^. Purshiana, although not free, has suffered much less than R. 

 Cali/ornica, which is burdened with a mass of synonymy and mis- 

 statements, some of them to be excused on account of imperfect 

 and fragmentary material and some with no excuse at all. 



Dr. C. Hart Merriam, in his paper, " North American Fauna. 

 No. 3," one of the perhaps unlooked-for consequences of which 

 will be a material reduction of our species, has made west- 

 ern naturalists deeply indebted to him. His maps of Faunal 

 areas show that there is at least one man in the eastern part of 

 America with some comprehension of the peculiar distribution of 

 our plants, for, as "all flesh is grass," the faunal area necessarily 

 depends on the floral. It may be seen by a glance at these maps 

 that the characteristic flora of California belongs to its great central 

 valley reaching from Mt. Shasta in the north to Tehachapi in the 

 south, and from the Coast Range on the west to the Sierra Nevada 

 on the east, an area extending over more than six degrees of lati- 

 tude and averaging a hundred miles in breadth. The remainder of 

 the State is occupied by intrusions from the surrounding regions 

 and by areas of transition. The boreal flora intrudes at the north 

 m two arms running down the Coast Range and Sierra Nevada re- 

 spectively; and m these extensions are found R. Purshiana and the 

 glabrous forms of R. Californica. R. tomeniella belongs to the 

 central valley and its foothills, ascending the western side of the 

 Sierra Nevada to the altitude of three thousand feet, where it 

 m«-ges gradually into the form described as R. rubra 



The onginal description of R. Cali/ornica Esch. , is not accessible 

 to me but m Torrey & Gray's Flora it is described with "style 

 5-cleft ! fruit 2-seeded, leaves deciduous." The first synonym, R. 



f f r ^ n vf ^"'"'^^^^ =^"^ %"^^^ P-^dy fron^ Oregon 



and partly fron. Cahfornian specimens, and therefore very probably 

 includes the form since published as R. ocddentalis Howell.t 



*FIor. Bor. Am. i, PL 44, 

 tGreene, Pittonia ii, 15, 



