IMPORTANT WESTERN BROWSE PLANTS PL 
stream control and the prevention of other erosion and.as shade for 
stock their economic value as a group is somewhat small. Their 
Juices are, as a rule, too bitter to render them palatable to grazing 
animals except, to a moderate degree, in the late fall. Their bitter 
bark has resulted in their local employment as a substitute for 
quinine (Cinchona). 
Red-esier cornel (C. stolonifera),?> or dogwood, known by many 
local names such as dogberry tree, guttertree, redbrush, shoemack, 
squawbush, and waxberry cornel, is the commonest of the western 
cornels. Jt ranges from Newfoundland and Labrador to Yukon 
Territory, California, New Mexico, Kansas, and Virginia, and oc- 
curs mainly as a riparian shrub, 3 to 10 feet high, from near sea 
level up to 8,500 feet or even higher in the mountains, often asso- 
ciated with willows, aspen, alders, and birches. The herbage is bit- 
ter and under normal conditions is not agreeable to livestock; some- 
times, however, it is observed to be cropped slightly by sheep, goats, 
and cattle, more especially in the fail, when the palatability (at 
least in Colorado and Wyoming) may range as high as fair. 
Western cornel (C. occidentalis, syn. C: pubescens Nutt. (1849), 
not C. pubescens Willd. (1818)), another dogwood, while usually 
classed as a shrub is not infrequently a small tree about 20 feet 
high. It is often common on bottom lands, stream banks, and other 
alluvial soils, from 2,500 to 6,500 feet in elevation, ranging from 
British Columbia to California and east to Nevada and Idaho. Or- 
dinarily this species is disregarded by livestock, but in northern 
California it has been grazed to some extent in the fall by cattle and 
less by sheep and goats. 
The bunchberries, frequently called herb dogwoods and dwarf 
cornels (Cornus canadensis and allies), are segregated by some 
authors into the genus Chamaepericlymenum, syn. Cornella. They 
are almost herbs, being woody at the stem bases only, and are north- 
ern, montane or arctic, acid-soil plants, consisting of two or perhaps 
three species. They are ornamental little plants but have no range 
value; they may perhaps occasionally act as a nurse crop for valuable 
conifer or other timber species. 
SILKTASSELS (GARRYA SPP.) 
At least 14 species of Garrya are well distinguishable, all of which 
with the exception of a single species in the West Indies, are con- 
fined to the Western States and Mexico. Only one of the species, 
Frémont silktassel (@. fremontiz) (pl. 9, A), locally called bear 
brush and California feverbush, occurs as far north as Washington. 
Where this shrub has come in on burns in southern Oregon it is 
reported to have been sometimes 25 per cent grazed, and it is said 
that some local stockmen regard it as a principal winter browse 
species. One species only, yellowleaf silktassel (G@. fiavescens), 1s 
found in the Rocky Mountains north of the Arizona-New Mexico 
line, and that extends only into southern Utah and Nevada. The 
% Appears in some of the books under the names Cornus instolonea, C. stolonifera 
riparia, and Svida stolonifera riparia. C.-stolonifera is typical of New England and east- 
ern Canada, but there seems to be no constant mark of distinction between the eastern 
and western forms. Western material perhaps has a more marked tendency to sucker out 
and form broad clumps, 
