66 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. ROSACER. 
The wood of Cercocarpus parvifolius is heavy, hard, and close-grained and difficult to season and 
work; it contains numerous thin medullary rays, and is bright red-brown, with thin light brown sap- 
wood composed of twenty layers of annual growth. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 
0.9365, a cubic foot weighing 58.36 pounds. It makes excellent fuel, and is sometimes used by turners 
for boxes and other small objects. The shoots and leaves, which possess a birch-like flavor, are relished 
by cattle, which browse upon them in late summer and autumn after the annual grasses have disap- 
peared." 
Cercocarpus parvifolius varies in the size and shape of its leaves and in the amount of their 
pubescence in different parts of the territory it inhabits; in the California coast ranges it frequently 
produces larger fruit than is developed in the dry interior parts of the country, and larger and propor- 
tionately broader leaves which are often quite glabrous,’ while near the southern boundary of the United 
States the leaves are sometimes much reduced in size* and are entire or sparingly toothed. 
Cercocarpus parvifolius was discovered in the Rocky Mountains on the head-waters of the Platte 
River in 1820 by Dr. Edwin P. James,’ the naturalist of Long’s expedition. In California it was first 
noticed a few years later by David Douglas. 
Cercocarpus parvifolius is sometimes seen in the 
botanic gardens of Europe, where it occasionally flowers and produces its fruit. 
1 Greene, Garden and Forest, ii. 470. 
2 Cercocarpus parvifolius, var. betuloides. 
Cercocarpus betuloides, Nuttall; Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. 
i. 427.— Hooker, Lond. Jour. Bot. vi. 218. 
Cercocarpus betulefolius, Nuttall ; Hooker, Icon. iv. t. 322. — Wal- 
pers, Rep. ii. 46.—Greene, Bull. Cal. Acad. ii. 396 ; Garden and 
Forest, l.c.; Fl. Francis. i. 59. 
Cercocarpus parvifolius, var. glaber, Brewer & Watson, Bot. Cal. 
i. 175. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 71. 
Professor E. L. Greene, whose opportunities for studying the 
trees of western America in their native forests have been great, 
believes (Garden and Forest, l. c.) that the California coast plant is 
specifically distinct from the plant of the dry interior part of the 
country on account of “a certain constant difference in the general 
bearing or habit easily seen at a glance but not easily defined,” and 
of the character of the bark, which on the coast plant is smooth and 
gray, “the outer layer deciduous and falling away in irregular 
flakes in the early autumn,” while on the Rocky Mountain plant it 
is “dark-colored, thick, persistent, and fissured;” but these differ- 
ences, like the more arborescent habit, the better developed leaves, 
and the absence of pubescence, are perhaps due to the more fayor- 
able climatic conditions amid which the coast plants have grown. 
5 Cercocarpus parvifolius, var. brevifolius, M. E. Jones, Zoé, ii. 
245. 
Cercocarpus brevifolius, Gray, Smithsonian Contrib. vy. 54 @a 
Wright. ii.). — Walpers, Ann. iv. 665. 
4 Cercocarpus parvifolius, var. paucidentatus, Watson, Proc. Am. 
Acad. xvii. 353. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. 
bey (7ls 
and in the mountains of southern Arizona, is connected by many 
This form, which is not uncommon in northern Mexico 
intermediate forms with that of the Colorado mountains, which has 
large and coarsely serrate leaves, just as the last-named passes 
imperceptibly into the still larger-leaved plant of the California 
coast. 
5 See ii. 96. 
6 See ii. 94. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 
Pruare CLXVI. Crrcocarpus PARVIFOLIUS. 
A flower, enlarged. 
A pistil, enlarged. 
An akene, enlarged. 
§ $2 A) Gb Cone 
i 
Sa 
. A seed, enlarged. 
es 
A flowering branch, natural size. 
Vertical section of a flower, enlarged. 
Front and rear views of a stamen, enlarged. 
A fruiting branch, natural size. 
. A fruit, inclosed in the tube of the calyx, enlarged. 
. Vertical section of an akene, enlarged. 
» An embryo, much magnified. 
