ANACARDIACES, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 27 
RHUS INTEGRIFOLIA. 
Mahogany. 
FLowERs diccious or polygamo-diccious, on conspicuously bracteate pedicels ; 
sepals orbicular, colored. Fruit pubescent. Leaves usually simple, persistent. 
Rhus integrifolia, Bentham & Hooker, Gen. i. 419.— 1226. — Bentham, Bot. Voy. Sulphur, 11.— Walpers, 
Brewer & Watson, Bot. Cal. i. 110. — Greene, Bull. Cul. Rep. i. 555; v. 414. — Torrey, Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 
Acad. ii. 393; Pittonia, i. 87, 201. — Engler, De Can- 44.— Gray, Ives’ Rep. 9. 
dolle Monogr. Phaner. iv. 387. —T. S. Brandegee, Proc. Styphonia serrata, Nuttall; Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. 
Cal. Acad. ser. 2, i. 208 ; ii. 189. — Sargent, Garden and i. 220; Sylva, iii. 6. — Dietrich, Syn. ii. 1226.— Wal- 
Forest, ii. 375. pers, Rep. v. 414. 
Styphonia integrifolia, Nuttall; Torrey & Gray, Fl. Rhus integrifolia, var. serrata, Engler, De Candolle 
N. Am. i. 220; Sylva, iii. 4, t. 82. — Dietrich, Syn. ii. Monogr. Phaner. iv. 388. 
A low evergreen tree, rarely thirty feet in height, with a short stout trunk two to three feet in 
diameter, and numerous long spreading branches; or usually a small often almost prostrate shrub. 
The surface of the bark, which varies from a quarter of an inch to half an inch in thickness, is bright 
reddish brown and exfoliates in large plate-like scales. The branchlets are bright reddish brown and 
are marked with many small elevated lenticels, and when they appear are covered with thick pale 
pubescence which gradually disappears in their second and third years. The winter-buds are small, 
obtuse, and clothed with a thick coat of pale tomentum. The leaves are simple or rarely ternate,’ with 
thickened revolute or spinosely toothed margins, and are pointed or rounded at the apex; they are 
puberulous when young, and at maturity are an inch and a half to three inches long, an inch to an 
inch and a half broad, thick and coriaceous, dark yellow-green on the upper surface, paler below, and 
glabrous with the exception of the stout petioles, broad thick midribs, and prominent reticulated veins. 
The flowers, which appear from February to April, are a quarter of an inch across when expanded, and 
are borne in short dense racemes forming hoary-pubescent terminal panicles an inch to three inches in 
length, the males and females on different plants. The pedicels are short and stout and are furnished 
with from two to four broadly ovate pointed persistent scarious ciliate and pubescent bracts. The 
sepals are rose-color, orbicular and concave, with scarious ciliate margins, and are rather less than half 
the length of the rounded ciliate reflexed rose-colored petals. The disk is annular, broad, and fleshy. 
The stamens are as long as the petals, with slender filaments and pale anthers, and in the fertile flower 
are minute and rudimentary. The ovary is broadly ovate, pubescent, and surmounted by three short 
thick connate styles with large capitate stigmas. The fruit is half an inch in length, ovate, flattened, 
more or less gibbous, with thick dark red densely pubescent and resinous viscid juice and a kidney- 
shaped smooth light chestnut-brown stone which has thick walls, and a flat seed with a thin pale coat 
and a broad dark-colored funicle covering its side. 
Rhus integrifolia is found in the immediate neighborhood of the Pacific coast from Santa Barbara 
to the shores of Magdalena Bay in Lower California and on the Santa Barbara and Cedros Islands. It 
usually occurs in sandy sterile soil along the sea-beaches and bluffs, in California rising generally to the 
height of one or two feet only and forming close impenetrable thickets which offer the least possible 
resistance to the ocean gales.? In more sheltered situations and on some of the islands*® it assumes a 
1 W.S. Lyon, Bot. Gazette, xi. 205, 333. —T. S. Brandegee, Zoé, 8 Professor Edward L. Greene noticed on San Miquel, one of 
i. 111, t. 4, £. 3-7 (Plants of Santa Catalina Island). the smaller of the Santa Barbara group, that the sands drifting 
2C. R. Orcutt, The Western American Scientist, vii. 149. from the beaches had almost entirely exterminated this species 
