Popular Studies of California Wild Flowers 13 



Ceanothus. Wild Lilac 



(Buckthorn Family] 

 By Bertha M. Rice 



If you have never seen California hills in springtime, abloom 

 with Wild Lilac in all its softened blues, exquisite lavenders or deli- 

 cate white shades, you have missed, scenes that rival in loveliness 

 the famed cherry festivals of Japan. /If you cannot be here to enjoy 

 the poet's ''Ceanothus Time," call on some of the best art dealers 

 and bid them show you pictures of California's bloom-clothed hill- 

 sides. Sights such as these have inspired the best in art from paint- 

 ers of the West as well as of those from other lands who frequently 

 make the journey to these shores just to catch a bit of this tender 

 glory. 



Ceanothus is one of our justly celebrated wild flowers. The 

 individual flowers, though small, form dense showy panicles of 

 bloom, and in the spring it covers the hills for miles with a radiance 

 that seems almost too delicate for earth-born loveliness. There are 

 many varieties of the plant generously distributed about the State, 

 from the pretty creeping Ceanothus growing on the sea's edge to 

 that of the tangled chaparral thickets clothing' innumerable hillsides. 

 It scatters its fragrant blooms through the stately redwood forests 

 of the Coast Range and trails its decorative "Squaw Carpets" under 

 the yellow pines of the high Sierras. A variety known to botanists 

 as C. cordulatus Kellogg, bordering higher altitudes, is popularly 

 called "Snow Bush" ; for when in full bloom it resembles fields of 

 newly fallen snow. During several months of the year these "Snow 

 Bushes" are obliged to carry heavy burdens of real snow that have 

 shaped and given them their flat-topped and compact form, which 

 provide such excellent shelter for the birds. It may be that this is 

 one of the reasons they are called Snow Bushes. , The name is 

 singularly appropriate. They seem wonderful plants, to me, and 

 add greatly to the interest and charm of those high mountains. We 

 have found them drifting their snowy blooms at an altitude of more 

 than 9,000 feet. 



The popularity, of Ceanothus is partly due, perhaps, to its 

 adaptability to various soils and climates ; for while indigenous to 

 the Pacific Coast, it can be grown almost anywhere. It has long' 

 been cultivated in European gardens and is much admired there for 

 its innumerable clusters of lovely, fragrant flowers, called "California 

 Blue Blossoms." 



Ceanothus has an interesting little cousin in the Eastern States, 

 known to botanists as C. americanus L., but famed as "New Jersey 

 Tea." It provided a welcome beverage, in Revolutionary days, 

 when people 'would not or could not afford to buy the English teas 

 because of exorbitant and unjust taxation. This variety is some- 

 times called "Red-root" ; it furnished an excellent dye, another com- 

 modity highly prized by those thrifty colonists. 



But our Ceanothus is a shrub of many parts, as are so many 

 of our native growing things. It is one of the good shrubs that 



