AMERICAN FOREST TREES 



sumed or it will mother and change to vinegar. Indians now put the berries to use 

 less frequently than in early times when they were nearly always hungry. 



Manzanita is of the same family as madrona. Its range extends along the 

 mountains of the Pacific coast ranges from Oregon to Mexico, and inland to Utah. 

 The largest trees are about twenty feet high and a foot or less in diameter; very much 

 divided and branched, with limbs crooked in more ways, perhaps, than those of any 

 other representative of the vegetable kingdom. Thousands of canes are cut from the 

 branches, and if any living man ever saw a straight one he failed to report it. Manza- 

 nita grows in almost impenetrable thickets on dry slopes and ridges. Its thin foliage 

 casts so pale a shadow that the tree's shade is little cooler than the boiling sun upon 

 the open naked ground and rocks. The bark is a reddish-chocolate color, and ex- 

 foliates in scales of papery thinness. The heart is nearly of the same color as the 

 bark, but the sap is white and very thin. The wood is hard, strong, stiff, but ex- 

 ceedingly brittle. If a branch is sharply bent it will fly into splinters. 



The uses of the wood are numerous, but the total quantity demanded is moder- 

 ate. Novelty stores sell small articles to tourists in California, sometimes passing 

 the wood off as mountain mahogany which does not so much as belong to the same 

 family. The most common articles manufactured by novelty shops from manzanita 

 are canes, paper weight*, paper knives, rulers, spoons, napkin rings, curtain rings, 

 cuff buttons, dominos, manicure sticks, jewel boxes, match safes, pin trays, and 

 photo frames. 



