FORESTRY. 



EDITED BY DR. B. E. FERNOW, 



Director of the New York School of Forestry, Cornell University, assisted by Dr. John C. Gifford of the same 



institution. 

 It takes thirty years to grow a tree and thirty minutes to cut it down and destroy it. 



THE MANZANITA 



The common manzanita of California is 

 a magnificent evergreen shrub, usually 8 to 

 15 feet high, with highly polished mahog- 

 any colored branches and berries. It is 

 an exceedingly common shrub throughout 

 the region, generally occupying wide areas 

 on dry, barren ridges, often to the entire 

 exclusion of other vegetation, and in 

 masses so thick that they are impenetrable 

 to man. The ways in which the plant is 

 used for food or medicine by Californian 

 Indians are discussed by Dr. V. K. Chest- 

 nut in a recent bulletin of the Department 

 of Agriculture. 



"The fruit is not much more than 1-3 

 inch in diameter, but the quantity pro- 

 duced is large. It was used extensively by 

 the Indians when the Spanish priests first 

 settled the country. From the priests it 

 received the name 'manzanita,' which 

 means 'little apple/ and was suggested by 

 the shape of the fruit. This name has 

 been universally adopted as the common, 

 as well as the botanical, specific name of 

 the shrub. The generic name, Arctostaph- 

 glos, is deriver from 2 Greek words mean- 

 ing 'bear' and 'grapes.' Bears are exceed- 

 ingly fond of the fruit, and it is in man- 

 zanita patches that they are hunted during 

 the summer and autumn. The ripe fruit is 

 dry, mealy, and nutritious. Its time of 

 ripening used to be memorialized by the 

 Concows and other tribes by holding a spe- 

 cial dance and a 'big eat.' The green fruit 

 is tart and so indigestible that it is likely 

 to cause colic, but when eaten in small 

 quantity it is of great value in quenching 

 thirst, an item of importance, because the 

 shrubs often grow on dry and barren hill- 

 sides. During July and August, when the 

 berries are ripe, a number of squaws go 

 out into the hills with their babies and 

 their huge carrying baskets and beat off 

 large quantities of the berries. These are 

 caught in the baskets and carried home, 

 where they are eaten raw or cooked, con- 

 verted into cider, or stored away for win- 

 ter. During the gathering, which may last 

 a considerable time, the babies are protect- 

 ed from thirst by wrapping them in the 

 soft, flexible green leaves of the moun- 

 tain iris. 



"The Yoki Indians recognized the fact 

 that the bushes do not all yield equally 

 well. On that account certain large and 

 prolific bushes, and even large areas, were 



owned by a family or a tribe, and only 

 after the rightful owner's demand was 

 satisfied could the fruit be picked by oth- 

 ers. Tribute was often exacted for per- 

 mission to gather food materials from such 

 property. 



"Manzanita berries are eaten in great 

 quantity, but some tribes, especially the 

 Numlakis, use them as a powder, like 

 pinole, or cooked in hot ashes and made 

 into bread or mush. Death is said to oc- 

 cur from eating the fruit too freely. The 

 bowels become stopped with great masses 

 of seeds and pulp and death follows, with 

 contraction of the pupils and general te- 

 tanic spasms, such as are observed with 

 strychnine poisoning or in the symptoms of 

 cerebro-spinal meningitis. 



"The method of making manzanita cider 

 as practiced by one of the more civilized 

 Concow women is worthy of note, for 

 from personal experience the beverage can 

 be recommended as delicious. The ripe 

 berries, carefully selected to exclude those 

 that are wormeaten, are scalded a few 

 minutes, or until the seeds are soft, when 

 the whole is crushed with an ordinary po- 

 tato masher. To a quart of this pulp an 

 equal quantity of water is added. The 

 mass is then poured immediately over 

 some dry pine needles or straw contained 

 in a shallow sieve basket, and the cider is 

 allowed to drain into a water-tight basket 

 placed beneath, or sometimes it is allowed 

 to stand an hour or so and then strained. 

 After cooling, the cider is ready for use 

 without the addition of sugar. It is de- 

 lightfully spicy and acid in taste. From 

 information obtained, it seems probable 

 that some of the Indians not only ferment 

 the cider to obtain vinegar, but also to ob- 

 tain an alcoholic beverage. The Yoki name 

 for the cider is ko-och-ok. 



"A better quality of cider is said to be 

 made from the pulp alone. The berries are 

 ground up in a 'pounding basket' and the 

 seed fragments separated by means of a 

 flat, circular basket about a foot in diam- 

 eter. Some of the ground material is 

 placed on this, and it is then thrown re- 

 peatedly into the air, falling on the mat 

 when it is in an inclined position. The 

 fine flour will cling to the meshes, while 

 the heavier seed parts will roll off on the 

 ground. 



"The Calpella Indians make a tea of the 

 leaves to cure severe colds, but they are 



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