54 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. ROSACEA. 
interior surface. The seed coat is thin and papery, light brown, and conspicuously marked with broad 
darker colored veins ; the cotyledons are orange-brown and inclose the short radicle. 
A form, Prunus ilicifolia, var. integrifolia,’ common on some of the islands off the coast of Cali- 
fornia and not rare on the mainland, has entire or occasionally spinose-serrate ovate-acuminate or 
lanceolate-acuminate, or sometimes broadly ovate and abruptly acute leaves, apiculate at the apex, wedge- 
shaped, rounded, or truncate at the base, two to three inches long, and from half an inch to two and 
a half inches broad, and produces rather larger fruit than the more common form with spinosely toothed 
leaves. 
Prunus ilicifolia is distributed from the shores of the Bay of San Francisco southward through 
the coast ranges to the San Julio canon in Lower California,? and it occurs on the western slopes and. 
foothills of the San Bernardino, and on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands. It grows as a low shrub 
on dry hillsides and mesas, or as a tree near streams in the bottoms of cations in moist sandy soil, 
reaching its greatest size in those of the Santa Inez Mountains near Santa Barbara, on the islands, and. 
in Lower California. 
The wood of Prunus ilicifolia is heavy, hard, strong, and close-grained, with a satiny surface 
susceptible of receiving a beautiful polish. It contains numerous medullary rays and many regularly 
distributed small open ducts, and is light red-brown, with thin lighter colored sapwood composed of eight 
or ten layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.9803, a cubic 
foot weighing 61.09 pounds.’ It is sometimes used for fuel, and might be employed in cabinet-making. 
Prunus Wicifolia appears to have been first noticed by David Douglas‘ who discovered it on the 
mountains near Monterey ; it was next found by Thomas Nuttall,> whose description is the earliest that 
was published. It was introduced into Europe many years ago, and is now occasionally seen in the 
gardens of southern Europe,’ where it flowers and produces fruit abundantly, and in California is some- 
times cultivated as an ornamental plant and for hedges." 
Few of the broad-leaved evergreens of North America are more beautiful than the Islay,° or are 
better suited to adorn a garden in those parts of the world where the climate permits it to display all 
the beauties of its abundant lustrous foliage, its showy racemes of flowers, and its handsome fruit. Its 
rapid growth when planted in good soil,’ the vigor which enables it to withstand the effects of annual 
cutting, and its spinescent rigid foliage, make it a useful and interesting hedge plant.” 
1 Prunus iicifolia, var. integrifolia, Sudworth, Garden and Forest, there. In 1850 it was seen by Herincq in the nurseries of Thibaut 
iv. 51. 
Prunus occidentalis, W.S. Lyon, Bot. Gazette, xi. 202, 333 (not 
Swartz). — Greene, Bull. Cal. Acad. ii. 395. 
Prunus ilicifolia, var. occidentalis, T. S. Brandegee, Proc. Cal. 
Acad. ser. 2, i. 209.— Sargent, Garden and Forest, ii. 400. 
2 Mr. T. S. Brandegee found the entire-leaved form of Prunus 
ilicifolia growing in the San Julio cafion at the southern limit of its 
known range in a tree-like form with trunks more than a foot in 
diameter (J. ¢. ii. 121 [Pl. Baja Cal.]). 
8 The absolutely dry wood of a log of the entire-leaved form in 
the Jesup Collection of North American Woods in the American 
Museum of Natural History in New York, collected by Mr. T. S. 
Brandegee on Santa Cruz Island, has a specific gravity of 0.7997, a 
cubic foot weighing 49.84 pounds (Garden and Forest, iii. 344). 
4 See ii. 94. 
5 See ii. 34. 
° I find no record of the date of introduction of Prunus ilicifolia 
into Europe, or of the name of the first person who cultivated it 
& Keteléer near Paris (Rev. Hort. 1850, 246), and five years later: 
it was included in the list of plants which perished in the garden 
of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris during the severe 
winter of 1854-55 (Rev. Hort. 1855, 313). It had been intro- 
duced into England before 1853 by the Royal Horticultural Society 
(Paxton, Brit. Fl. Gard. iii. 44, £. 254). 
7 The early Spanish settlers in California appreciated the beauty 
of Prunus iicifolia, and frequently used it to decorate their gar- 
dens ; and in those of some of the old missions, fine specimens, 
probably a hundred years old, testify to its value as an ornamental 
plant. 
8 Prunus ilicifolia is also known in California as the Spanish Wild 
Cherry and the Mountain Evergreen Cherry. 
® Plants in the nurseries of the Leland Stanford, Jr. University 
in Santa Clara County, California, which are only three years old, 
are eighteen feet high with heads fifteen feet in diameter. 
10 Nicholson, Dict. Gard. £. 403, A. (as Cerasus). — Naudin, 
Manuel de VAcclimateur, 445 (as Pygeum). 
