IN CALIFORNIA 215 



that, whatever the season, seems always full of the 

 enthusiasm and hopefulness of youth. 



The madrono, while found sparingly in the 

 south a few trees denizen the skirts of the Mount 

 Wilson trail north of Pasadena is at its best from 

 the San Francisco region northward, extending 

 through the coast country of Oregon and Washing- 

 ton to Puget Sound. It appears to have been in the 

 last named neighborhood that it was first seen by a 

 botanist the Scotchman Archibald Menzies, who 

 sent specimens to England in 1827. In his honor it 

 was named Arbutus Menziesii; and by the way, if 

 you are not Scotch it may surprise you to know that 

 this collector's name is pronounced Ming-iz. Long 

 before Menzies, however, the tree had caught the 

 eye of members of Portola's Expedition of 1769, as 

 they turned southward after the discovery of San 

 Francisco Bay. Under date of November 5 of that 

 year, Padre Crespi records: "These last two days 

 many madronos have been met with, although the 

 fruit is smaller than the Spanish but indeed the 

 same kind." 2 Madrono is Spanish for the straw- 

 berry-tree of Europe (Arbutus unedo), and those 

 pioneers made a happy guess in calling it as they 



2 "En estas dos jomadas ultimas, se ban encontrado muchos ma- 

 dronos, aunque la fruta es mas chica que la de Espana pero si de la 

 misma especie." 



