192 HANDBOOK 14 8, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



25. Tall shrubs or small trees; wood hard, brittle, 

 mahogany-colored; leaves elliptical to egg- or re- 

 versely egg-shaped, wedge-shaped at base, single 

 or clustered near tips of short, scarred spurlike 

 twigs; side veins 4-10 pairs, parallel from midrib to 

 tips of marginal teeth; "seeds" (achenes) long-, 

 twisted-, hairy-tailed; ponderosa pine woods; Cas- 

 cades, Deschutes Co., s. to Lake and Klamath Cos., 

 Oreg., not in Wash. 



cercocarpus (Cercocarpus spp.). 

 27. Mature leaves to IV2 inches long, narrowly 

 reverse-egg-, or egg-shaped to elliptical; side 

 veins 4-6 pairs; marginal teeth short, broad, 

 triangular, abruptly short-pointed; small tree, to 

 26 feet high; type locality, "mountains of Santa 

 Barbara, California: April." 

 birchleaf cercocarpus (Cercocarpus betuloides). 

 27. Mature leaves to 3 inches long, broadly reverse- 

 egg- to egg-shaped; side veins 6-10 pairs; 

 marginal teeth coarse, egg-shaped or triangular; 

 "seeds" to % inch long, with tails to 4 inches long; 

 shrub or small tree to 16 feet high; type locality, 

 "on rocky hillsides, Modoc County, California." 



longtail birchleaf cercocarpus 



(Cercocarpus betuloides var. macrourus).™ 



24. Leaves not as above, narrow and wedge- or reversely 



lance-shaped, or broader and fan-shaped, 3- (or 4- 



to 9-) toothed or lobed at tips, stalkless or nearly so; 



very bitter to taste, aromatic. 



antelope bitterbrush and sagebrushes. 

 28. Leaf margins rolled under (revolute); leaves green 

 or softly white-hairy, or (under lens) finely gland- 

 dotted on upper surface (more coarsely so on 

 margins), white- woolly-hairy between veins on 

 under surface, to % inch long, winter-persistent, 

 single on fast-growing shoots, or (mostly) clustered 

 near tips of short, scarred, spurlike twigs; twigs 

 brown, whitish-hairv, sometimes with tack-shaped 





49 In southern Oregon, eurlleaf and longtail birchleaf cercocarpus sometimes 

 crossbreed, resulting in hybrids with characters intermediate between those of the 

 two parents. Near Logan, Utah, where some winter deer-feeding experiments 

 were made with native browse plants, eurlleaf and mountain cercocarpus (Cercocar- 

 pus montanus) have crossbred. Concerning the hybrid, Arthur I). Smith reports 

 (Feeding Deer on Browse Species during Winter, Jour. Range Mangt. 3: 130-132. 

 1950.): "Mountain mahogany {Cercocarpus ledifolius) p(r)oved most desirable of 

 all the plants offered. Next' in importance in the list, although based upon but 

 one offering, was material from a hybrid between C. montanus and C. ledifolius." 

 More field notes are needed on the occurrence, reproduction, and browse values of 

 cercocarpus hybrids. 



Plants of the Cercocarpus genus are almost universally known in the West as 

 "mountain-mahogany." However, in the new Forest Service Check List "cerco- 

 carpus" (which perhaps might better be abbreviated to cercocarp) was adopted 

 as the approved common name. This action stems from Federal Trade Commis- 

 sion hearings on fair trade practice in "mahogany" in which the old Forest Service 

 ruling that "mahogany" should not be employed for any plants but species of the 

 genus Swietenia was cited. 



