800 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



in their first winter bright reddish brown. Winter-buds obtuse, -' long, with numerous 

 imbricated broadly-ovate bright brown scales keeled on the back, apiculate at apex, and 

 slightly ciliate. Bark of young stems and of the branches smooth, bright red, separating 



Fig. 713 



into large thin scales, becoming on old trunks '$'-%' thick, dark reddish brown, and covered 

 with small thick plate-like scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light brown 

 shaded with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood of 8-12 layers of annual growth; used 

 for furniture and largely for charcoal. The bark is sometimes employed in tanning leather. 



Distribution. High well-drained slopes usually in rich soil or ocasionally in gravelly 

 valleys; islands at Seymore Narrows, and southward through the coast region of British 

 Columbia, Washington and Oregon; over the coast ranges of northern California, extend- 

 ing east to Mt. Shasta and south along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada from 

 altitudes of 2500- 4000 to Placer County ; on many of the coast ranges south of San Fran- 

 cisco Bay to the mountains of southern California; common and of its largest size in the 

 Redwood-forests of northwestern California; much smaller north of California; rare on the 

 Sierra Nevada and southward except on the Santa Cruz Mountains, and often shrubby in 

 habit. 



Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of western and southern Europe. 



2. Arbutus texana Buckl. Madrona. 

 Arbutus xalapensis S. Watson, not H. B. K. 



Leaves oval, ovate, or lanceolate, rounded, acute and often apiculate at apex, and 

 rounded or cuneate at base, with slightly thickened usually entire or remotely crenulate- 

 toothed or coarsely serrate margins, often tinged with red when they unfold and pubescent 

 below, and at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and glabrous on the upper surface, 

 pale and usually slightly pubescent on the lower surface, l'-3' long and f '~H' wide, with a 

 thick midrib often villose-pubescent below; petioles stout, pubescent, sometimes becoming 

 nearly glabrous, l'-l^' in length. Flowers j' long, with ciliate calyx-lobes and a pubescent 

 ovary, appearing in March on stout recurved hoary-tomentose club-shaped pedicels from 

 the axils of ovate acute hoary-tomentose often persistent bracts, in compact conic hoary- 

 tomentose panicles 2^' long. Fruit pubescent until half grown, becoming glabrous, usu- 

 ally produced very sparingly, ripening in summer, dark red, f ' in diameter, with thin granu- 

 lar flesh and a rather thick more or less completely formed stone; seeds numerous in each 

 cell, compressed, puberulous. 



A tree, in Texas rarely more than 18-20 high, with a short often crooked trunk 8'~10' in 



