ROSACEA, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 65 
CERCOCARPUS PARVIFOLIUS. 
Mountain Mahogany. 
LEAVES cuneate-obovate, coarsely glandular-serrate above the middle. 
Cercocarpus parvifolius, Nuttall; Hooker & Arnott, Bot. vi. 111, 359. — Brewer & Watson, Bot. Cal. i. 174; ii. 
Voy. Beechey, 337. — Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 427; 444,—M. E. Jones, Hacur. Bot. 12, 15, 20, 21; Zoi, ii. 
Pacific R. R. Rep. ii. 164. — Hooker, Icon. iv. t. 8323. — 245. — Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. i. 374. — Watson, 
Walpers, Rep. ii. 45.— Torrey, Frémont’s Rep. 89; Proc. Am. Acad. xvii. 353. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. 
Limory’s Rep. 139; Sitgreaves’ Rep. 158; Pacific BR. Am. 10th Census U.S. ix. 71, — Coulter, Man. Rocky Mi. 
R. Rep. iv. 83; Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 63; Bot. Wilkes Bot. 81. — Greene, Fl. Francis. i. 59. 
Explor. Exped. 287.— Dietrich, Syn. iii. 119.—Gray, Cercocarpus fothergilloides, Torrey, Ann. Lye. N. Y. ii. 
Smithsonian Contrib. iii. 68 ; v.54 (Pl. Wright. i., ii.). — 198 (not Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth). 
Watson, King’s Rep. v. 82.— Rothrock, Wheeler’s Rep. 
A bushy tree, with aromatic leaves and branches, sometimes twenty to thirty feet in height, with 
a trunk which rarely attains a greater diameter than ten inches, and slender rigid upright branches ; or 
more often a small or tall shrub branching from a thickened base. The bark of the trunk is a six- 
teenth of an inch thick, the generally smooth surface being divided by narrow shallow fissures and 
broken into small square persistent red-brown scales. The branchlets are clothed at first with pale silky 
pubescence ; this soon disappears, and during their first year they are rather bright red-brown and are 
marked by occasional oblong light-colored lenticels, and in their second year are dark gray or brown 
and covered with the conspicuous ring-like leaf-scars. The leaves, which do not fall until the summer 
of their second year, are cuneate-obovate, rounded or obtuse or rarely acuminate and gradually con- 
tracted at the base, coarsely glandular-serrate above the middle, or rarely almost entire, or slightly 
three-toothed or apiculate at the apex; when they unfold they are coated with pale pubescence on 
both surfaces, and at maturity are puberulous or glabrous above and more or less pubescent below, and 
are subcoriaceous, dark yellow-green on the upper, and paler or often nearly white or sometimes ferru- 
gineous on the lower surface, half an inch to two and a half inches in length and a quarter of an inch 
to an inch in breadth, with slightly thickened and revolute margins, broad midribs, four to six pairs of 
conspicuous primary veins, and reticulate veinlets; and they are borne on broad channeled petioles which 
vary from an eighth to nearly half an inch in length. The stipules are lanceolate, acuminate, apiculate, 
from an eighth to a quarter of an inch in length, and early deciduous. The flowers, which are produced 
on slender hairy pedicels, are solitary or geminate in the axils of the crowded leaves, and are a quarter 
of an inch long, with a slender tube covered on the outer surface with pale tomentum and a narrow 
obtusely lobed limb. The mature calyx-tube of the fruit is spindle-shaped, light chestnut-brown, 
slightly puberulous, deeply cleft at the apex, and from one half to three quarters of an inch long. 
The akene is more or less conspicuously sulcate on the back and is covered, like the persistent tail-like 
style which is often four or five inches in length, with long white hairs. 
Cercocarpus parvifolius is widely and generally distributed on the mountain ranges of the arid 
portions of western North America from western Nebraska* to the northern slopes of the Siskiyou 
Mountains in Oregon’ on the north, and to western Texas* and northern Mexico on the south; in 
California, west of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, it is common through the coast ranges, extending 
south to the San Jacinto Mountains; it occurs on Santa Cruz Island‘ and on some of the mountain 
ranges of Lower California. 
1 Bessey, Bull. Agric. Exper. Stat. Nebraska, iv. art. iv. 19. 8 Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. ii. 104 (Man. Pl. W. Texas). 
2 Greene, Garden and Forest, ii. 470. 4 Greene, Bull. Cal. Acad. ii. 396 (as C. betulcefolius). 
