ROSACEA. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 63 
CERCOCARPUS LEDIFOLIUS. 
Mountain Mahogany. 
LEAVES narrowly lanceolate, entire. 
Cercocarpus ledifolius, Nuttall; Torrey & Gray, Fl. WN. Watson, Bot. Cal. i. 174. — Rothrock, Wheeler's Rep. vi. 
Am. i. 427; Sylva, ii. 28, t. 51.— Hooker, Icon. iv. t. 48, 111, 360.— Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Cen- 
324. — Walpers, Rep. ii. 46. — Dietrich, Syn. iii. 119. — sus U. S. ix. 71. — Coulter, Man. Rocky Mt. Bot. 80. — 
Watson, King’s Rep. v. 83, 420.— Parry, Am. Nat. ix. M. E. Jones, Zoé, ii. 244. 
201, 270; Proc. Davenport Acad. i. 146.— Brewer & 
A resinous and slightly aromatic tree, rarely attaining a height of forty feet, with a short stout 
trunk occasionally two and a half feet in diameter, and stout spreading usually contorted branches 
forming a round compact head; generally much smaller, or often a low intricately branched shrub. 
The bark of the trunk of old individuals is an inch thick and is divided by deep broad furrows, the 
red-brown surface being broken into thin persistent plate-like scales. The branchlets are red-brown at 
first and coated with pale pubescence, but soon become glabrous and sometimes covered with a glaucous 
bloom, and in their second season are silver gray or dark brown, and for many years are marked by the 
conspicuous elevated leaf-scars which give a moniliform appearance to the branches of slow-grown 
stunted individuals. The leaves, which remain on the branches until the end of their second summer, 
are crowded, narrowly lanceolate, acute at both ends, apiculate, and entire, with thick revolute margins ; 
they are thick and coriaceous, reticulate-veined, with broad thick midribs deeply grooved on the upper 
side, and obscure primary veins, usually puberulous when young but at maturity glabrous on the upper 
surface, and more or less coated with pale or rufous pubescence on the lower surface, and are resinous, 
half an inch to an inch in length, a third to two thirds of an inch in width, and are borne on short 
broad petioles. The stipules are minute, nearly triangular, and caducous. The flowers are solitary, 
sessile in the axils of the clustered leaves, two thirds of an inch long, the calyx with acute lobes covered 
with pale tomentum. The enlarged calyx-tube of the fruit is almost half an inch long, nearly cylin- 
drical but rather larger above than .below, ten-ribbed, obscurely ten-angled, slightly cleft at the apex, 
and coated with pale tomentum. ‘The akene is chestnut-brown, pointed at the two ends, obscurely 
angled, a quarter of an inch long, and clothed with long pale or tawny hairs similar to those that cover 
the tail-like lengthened style which at maturity is two or three inches in length, and is generally con- 
tracted by one or two partial corkscrew twists. 
Cercocarpus ledifolius inhabits the mountain ranges of the interior region of the United States, 
and is distributed from western Wyoming to the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains of Montana, 
the Coeur d’Aléne Mountains of Idaho, and the eastern portions of the Blue Mountains of Oregon, and 
southward through the Wasatch Mountains and the ranges of the Great Basin to the eastern slopes of 
the Sierra Nevada and the northern slopes of the San Bernardino Mountains and to the mountains 
of northern New Mexico and Arizona. It inhabits dry gravelly arid slopes at elevations of from five 
thousand to nine thousand feet above the level of the ocean, growing sometimes on almost precipitous 
cliffs and on rocky ridges, where it is a densely branched contorted shrub which often forms broad 
thickets, or, on better soil and with more moisture, rising to a shapely tree and reaching its greatest 
size on the high foothill-slopes of the mountain ranges of central Nevada between six thousand and 
eight thousand feet above the level of the sea.’ 
1 Sargent, Am. Jour. Sci. ser. 3, xvii. 420. 
