100 FOREST TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 



EVERGREEN HUCKLEBERRY. 



(Vaeeimum ovatum.) 



" How calmly sinks the parting Bun ! Yet twilight lingers still : 

 And beautiful as dreams of heaven, it slumbers on the hill." — Prentice. 



OF all the formal symmetrical beauties of the Pacific 

 coast, none exceeds the Evergreen Huckleberry bush; 

 but why is it that these native beauties never fail to 

 strike the stranger with admiration, while the average Cali- 

 fornian is so seemingly indifferent? Familiarity can scarcely 

 be pleaded, since few are able to recall them at all, perhaps 

 being more devoted to a tour of observation, may account for 

 it, as in other respects we are not inferior to them in appre- 

 ciation. This shrub is usually five to ten feet high, mostly 

 with numerous spreading branches and hairy branchlets; 

 leaves thick and leathery, smooth, dark green, shining, some- 

 what egg-shaped, acute pointed, an inch or so long, and 

 about half as wide, often also narrowed at base, margins 

 with sharp teeth ; these leaves are set close together and 

 nearly down on the twigs; the pink and white flowers, tiny, 

 pitcher-form, in dense, short, axillary, and terminal race- 

 moid clusters — they are nearly or often quite hid, and pend- 

 ing beneath the sheltering wing-like arrangement of the 

 leaves, or only coyly peeping out here and there, to blush in 

 the genial sunbeams ; whenever it is found flourishing along 

 shady or half-shady borders of creeks, its overspanning 

 branches arching above the steep banks, in strictly two- 

 rowed foliage, horizontally arranged in due order along 

 each side of the fan-sprayed twigs, as it were, in the act of 

 soaring, this never fails to attract our attention and win our 

 admiration at all seasons of the year. And yet still more is 

 this joyous impress of heart enhanced by the very pretty 

 early spring blooms that modestly gem these graceful boughs. 

 The fruit is black and varnished, edible, but the best quality 

 are more pulpy, and these are usually covered over with a 

 dense blue bloom ; the varnished variety are apt to have a 

 tougher skin and drier berry, and are therefore less delicious. 

 It is, indeed, ver} 7 doubtful if we have any Huckleberries 

 equal in quality with some Eastern Blueberries. Authors 

 speak of the fruit as "insipid," perhaps because they have 

 only eaten it on the cold, damp coast; ten to twenty miles 

 inland, or anywhere along the vanishing fog line, the fruit 

 is much better. 



