MYRICACER, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 93 
MYRICA CALIFORNICA. 
Wax Myrtle. 
LEAVES lanceolate-cuneate or oblong-lanceolate, acute, sharply serrate, coriaceous, 
dark green and lustrous, puberulous on the lower surface. 
Myrica Californica, Chamisso, Linnea, vi. 535 (1831). — xii. pt. ii. 68. —C. de Candolle, Prodr. xvi. pt. ii. 153. — 
Bentham, Pl. Hartweg. 336; Bot. Voy. Sulphur, 55. — Hall, Bot. Gazette, ii. 93. — Brewer & Watson, Bot. Cal. 
Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am. ii. 160. — Hooker & Arnott, Bot. ii. 81. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. 
Voy. Beechey, 390. — Lindley, Jour. Lond. Hort. Soe. ix. 137. 
vii. 282, f.— Torrey, Pacific R. R. Rep. iv. pt. v. 137; Gale Californica, Greene, Man. Bot. Bay Region, 298 
Bot. Wilkes Explor. Exped. 465.— Newberry, Pacific (1894). 
R. R. Rep. vi. pt. iii. 89.— Cooper, Pacific Rh. Rh. Rep. 
A tree, occasionally forty feet in height, with a trunk fourteen or fifteen inches in diameter, and 
short slender branches which form a narrow compact round-topped head; usually much smaller, and at 
the north and toward the southern limits of its range reduced to a low shrub often not more than three 
or four feet tall. The bark of the trunk is smooth, compact, from a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch in 
thickness, dark gray or light brown on the surface, and dark red-brown internally. The branchlets are 
stout, dark green, and coated with loose tomentum when they first appear, and dark green or light or 
dark red-brown and glabrous or pubescent during their first year; in their second year, when they are 
much roughened by the elevated leaf-scars, they grow darker, and ultimately become ashy gray. The 
leaf-buds are ovate, acute, about an eighth of an inch thick, and covered with loosely imbricated ovate 
acute dark red-brown tomentose scales which are persistent on the lengthening branchlet and when 
fully grown are often nearly half an inch long. The leaves are lanceolate-cuneate or oblong-lanceolate, 
acute, and remotely serrate with small incurved teeth except at the gradually narrowed base, which is 
decurrent on a short stout petiole; when they unfold they are covered with small white glands, and 
coated below with thick rusty tomentum which disappears at the end of a few days, and when fully 
grown they are thin and firm in texture, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, and on the 
lower surface yellow-green, glabrous or puberulous, and marked with minute black glandular dots, from 
two to four inches long and from one half to three quarters of an inch wide, with narrow yellow 
midribs slightly impressed above, and numerous obscure primary veins arcuate near the thickened and 
revolute margins and connected by rather conspicuous reticulate cross veinlets; they are slightly 
fragrant, and fall gradually after the end of their first year. On vigorous sterile shoots lanceolate 
acute hairy caducous stipules nearly a quarter of an inch long occasionally occur. The flower-buds 
are subglobose, about an eighth of an inch long, and coated with hoary tomentum. The flowers, 
which are subtended by conspicuous bractlets, open from April in the south to June in the north, those 
of the two sexes being produced on the same individual, the staminate in oblong simple aments often 
an inch in length, and the pistillate in shorter aments in the axils of upper leaves, while androgynous 
aments often occur between the two with staminate flowers at their base and pistillate flowers above, or 
with the staminate flowers also mixed with the pistillate flowers at the apex ;* the scales of the aments 
are ovate-acute, coated with pale tomentum and furnished with small ovate acute lateral bractlets. The 
stamens are fifteen or sixteen in number, and are composed of oblong slightly emarginate anthers, which 
are dark red-purple at first but soon become yellow, and slender filaments united into an elongated 
1 The usual arrangement of the flowers is with unisexual aments, androgynous aments is not rare, and some individuals appear to 
the sterile below the fertile on the branch, but the occurrence of produce exclusively or predominantly staminate flowers. 
