IMPORTANT WESTERN BROWSE PLANTS 107 
berry, currants, lupines, bigleaf maple, California hazel, and 
California black oak. ; 
The large, rather delicate leaves and slender twigs of this bush, 
with their sweet, birchlike flavor and demulcent juices, are a favorite 
with livestock, particularly sheep, goats, and cattle. Because of its 
high palatability, size, abundance, and wide distribution, accessi- 
bility, copiousness of the foliage and edible stems, rapidity of growth, 
ability to stand grazing, and good reproductive powers, bluebrush is 
among the first west-American browse plants. It is probably the 
most important single browse species in California—certainly so in 
northern California and the Sierra Nevada. ‘The species is evidently 
nutritious since livestock thrive so well on it and the carrying 
capacity of many California and Oregon ranges is based primarily 
on bluebrush. It is also a favorite species for deer. 
The profuse and handsome panicles of sweet-scented blue (occa- 
sionally white) flowers are produced from April to July; and if 
moisture and temperature conditions permit, there is not infrequently 
a second blooming season in the fall. These flowers make the species 
a valuable honey plant and have suggested.its use as an ornamental ; 
the flowers are sometimes cropped by livestock, but some stockmen 
believe they are poisonous. Although saponin has been isolated in 
bluebrush (95), the percentage, at least in the leaves and twigs, is evi- 
dently too low to have physiological significance with livestock on 
the range. The very bitter, 3-lobed fruiting capsules are sometimes 
erazed by livestock in winter or when there is a scarcity of feed— 
apparently on account of the edible seeds they contain; these capsules 
have active chemical properties.?* 
Leland S. Smith, a technical grazing man on the Tahoe National 
Forest, California, who has been making a special study of blue- 
brush for a number of years in cooperation with Doctors George 
H. Hart and Arthur W. Sampson of the California Agricultural 
College, reports that he finds the palatability of this species varies 
considerably during the grazing season and that this seems to be 
correlated with differences in the chemical composition of the herb- 
age. Smith finds that if the bush is grazed before the leaves are 
well formed cattle do not do so well on it. He also regards bluebrush 
as a fire type and states that it is readily shaded out by pine and 
fir reproduction. 
Trailing bluebrush (C. diversifolius), known also as dwarf, or 
low ceanothus, and squaw-carpet, a trailing or prostrate-spreading, 
somewhat matlike species occurs between 2,000 and 6,000 feet in coni- 
fer woods of northern California and the Sierra Nevada and is fair 
sheep forage, but is usually local and in scattered patches. 
Lemmon bluebrush (C. /emmonz),a small California species, with 
delicate foliage and deep-blue inflorescence, is very palatable to both 
sheep and cattle, though owing to lack of abundance and wide distri- 
bution it can hardly be ranked among the first-class species. 
2 At the request of the Forest Service James F. Couch made a study in 1922 of the 
capsules, seed, and fruiting peduncles of bluebrush. The chemical analyses demonstrated 
the presence of saponin, but repeated laboratory tests with the material on guinea pigs 
produced negative results. Doctor Couch expressed the opinion that probably this material 
would not cause sickness in animals unless there should exist some lesion of the mucous 
membrane lining the digestive tract to enable ready ingestion of the saponin, 
