8 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



death, if you will, as only another and higher step or birth 

 in life, instinct with joy and gladness and the voice of 

 melody. 



Found in the whole coast range of California, and so 

 northward to the Cascades in Oregon, and to our Sierras, 

 growing along cold, shady creek banks, and in damp ravines 

 and deep gorges, often in considerable numbers, as on Yew 

 Creek, in Mendocino County and elsewhere, but never in 

 groves. 



LAUREL HAWTHORN, OR TOYON TREE. 



(Heteromeles [Photiniaj Arbutifolia.) 



" Mark the fair blooming of the hawthorn tree, 

 Finely clothed m a robe of white." — W?n. Browne. 



KINDRED to the renowned Rowan Tree {Pirns aucupa- 

 ria), and sacred to somewhat similar associations, few 

 denizens of the wild woods possess greater interest 

 than the Toyon tree, or Laurel Hawthorn. A shrub, or 

 small tree, five to twenty-five feet high, from a few inches to 

 a foot in diameter; leaves thick and leathery, oblong or ellip- 

 tical, lance-like, sharp at the ends, and sometimes at the base, 

 two to four inches long, half an inch or more broad ; leaf- 

 stem stout and short, margins saw-toothed, the shallow teeth 

 sharp, usually tipped with a gland, color sap-green above, 

 and lighter yellowish green beneath. Seen abroad, along 

 the sandy coast, it is more dusty and sombre; but massed 

 or clumped on our hillsides, bending over the brow of the 

 cliff, or perched on the point of rocks looking seaward, this 

 winter-green shrub glows in livelier, lighter hues than oaks, 

 and a thousand other surrounding foliage : this becomes still 

 more conspicuously manifest as it climbs the dry hills, and 

 is again altogether a rounded shrub. The numerous little 

 white flowers, Hawthorn-like, or less than half an inch 

 across, are in large compound clusters of a span or so, on 

 the ends of sturdy twigs: petals or flower leaves are round- 

 ish and slightly scolloped, on short claws; five-toothed cup, 

 short and thick, becoming still more thickened and im- 

 bedded on the end of the fruit, like partridge berries, or tiny 

 twin berry [Michella), huckleberries, wintergreen, etc.; sta- 

 mens, ten — two opposite each tooth ; central styles two, more 

 or less united ; at length the bright scarlet berries, which all 

 along late Summer and Autumn, have been a little tur- 

 baned, or remotely pear-shaped, swell out nearly globular, 



