May 12, 1909 



dwarfed, only four to six feet high, since it has to contend with 

 the high winds and snow storms of winter. In the canyons and 

 sheltered places it is frequently a well rounded tree fifteen or 

 twenty feet high with a short trunk a foot in diameter, and sev- 

 eral heavy branches almost as thick as the trunk. It is appar- 

 ently scarce on the Clover mountains, the northern extension of 

 the Rnby Mountains. 



Sargent, in the Manual of the Trees of North America, 508, 

 says: "Dry gravelly arid slopes at elevations of 5000-9000 feet 

 above the sea; sometimes on almost perpendicular cliffs and on 

 rocky ridges as a densely branched contorted shrub, with linear 

 revolute leaves, and smaller flowers aud fruits (var. intricatus 

 M. E. Jones); mountain ranges of the interior region of the 

 United States from western Wyoming to the western slopes of 

 the Rocky Mountains of Montana, theCoeur d'Alene Mountains 

 of Idaho, the Blue Mountains of Washington and Klamath 

 County, Oregon, and southward through the Wasatch Moun- 

 tains and the ranges of the Great Bisin to the eastern slopes of 

 the Sierra Nevada, the northern slopes of the San Bernardino 

 Mountains, California, and to the m untains of northern New- 

 Mexico and Arizona; most abundant and of its largest size on 

 the high foothill slopes of the mountain ranges of central Ne- 

 vada at elevations of 6000-8000 feet/' 



The genus Cercocarpus H. B. K. was established in Nov. 

 Gen. et Sp. 6: 232.//. 550. 1823, being based upon C.fother- 

 oilloidcs, a Mexican species. Up to 1840 this remained the 

 only known member of the genus, when Nuttall published C. 

 parvifolius, C. betuloidcs, and C. ledifolius. Since that time 

 five other species have been proposed, the latest of which, C. 

 Traskiae Eastwood, is found only on Santa Catalina Island, 

 California. C. parvifolius is the most widely distributed of all, 

 ranging on the cast f.om Nebra ;ka (type locality "bushy ravines 

 near the sources of the Platte") to western Texas, and on the 

 west from southern Oregon to Lower California. The! flowers 

 of all the species arc small, yellowish, and in fruit the elongated 

 persistent style is covered with long whitish hairs. 



