ERICACE^ 729 



long, with numerous imbricated broadly ovate bright brown scales keeled on the back, 

 apiculate at the apex, and slightly ciliate. Bark of young stems and of the branches 

 smooth, bright red, separating into large thin scales, becoming on old trunks ^'-^' 

 thick, dark reddish brown, and covered with small thick plate-like scales. "Wood 

 heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light brown shaded with red, with thin lighter 



colored sapwood of 8-12 layers of annual growth; used for furniture and largely 

 for charcoal. The bark is sometimes employed in tanning leather. 



Distribution. High well-drained slopes usually in rich soil; islands of British Co- 

 lumbia at Seymour Narrows, southward through the coast region of Washington 

 and Oregon, and over the California coast ranges to the Santa Lucia Mountains; 

 common and of its largest size in the Redwood forests of northern California; far- 

 ther north and south and on the dry eastern slopes of the California mountains much 

 smaller; south of the Bay of San Francisco often shrubby in habit. 



Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of western and southern Europe. 



2. Arbutus Xalapensis, H. B. K. Madrona. 



Leaves oval, ovate, or lanceolate, rounded, acute, and often apiculate at the apex, 

 and rounded or wedge-shaped at the base, with slightly thickened usually entire or 

 remotely creuulate-toothed or coarsely serrate margins, when they unfold often tinged 

 with red, especially on the petioles, midribs, and margins, or sometimes pubescent 

 below along the upper side of the midribs and on the petioles, and at maturity thick 

 and coriaceous, dark green, lustrous and glabrous above, pale and glabrous or cine- 

 reo-pubescent below, 1-3' long, f'-l^' wide, with thick light colored midribs some- 

 times puberulous on the upper side, and reticulate veinlets; their petioles stout, 

 pubescent, I'-l^' long and often furnished toward the apex with several dark 

 glands. Flowers \' long, with ovaries sparingly or densely covered with long 

 scattered white hairs, appearing in March on stout reddish pubescent recurved ped- 

 icels from the axils of ovate acute scarious bracts, in compact conical pubescent 

 panicles 2^' long. Fruit usnally produced very sparingly, ripening in summer, dark 

 red, y in diameter, with thin granular flesh and a rather thick more or less com- 

 pletely formed stone; seeds numerous in each cell, compressed, puberulous. 



A tree, in Texas rarely more than 18-20 high, with a short often crooked trunk 



