150 MISC. PUBLICATION 101, U. S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE 
vernacular names, but the white-berried species are most commonly ~ 
known as snowberries, and the red-berried ones as coralberries. 
Probably all native species of Symphoricarpos are grazed to some — 
extent, especially by sheep, cattle, and goats, and some of them are 
of much range importance particularly in the Great Basin region. 
Chapline (75) regards them as “ of moderately high palatability ” 
for goats and an important source of feed supply for that class of 
livestock. In the West there is a general tendency for Symphori- — 
carpos species to have greater palatability on the eastern and south- | 
ern ranges than on the western and northern ranges. These shrubs— 
and especially S. a/bus—are considered by some to be the most im- 
portant browse plants in Utah, Nevada, and southern Idaho. Since © 
the finding by Greshoff of saponin in the leaves (but not the fruit) — 
of S. albus (syn. S. racemosus) and S. mollis (95) some writers — 
have placed this genus in the group of suspected plants, and Pammel 
states that cases of poisoning from S. albus have been reported from — 
the Old World. However, no case of livestock sickness, let alone © 
loss, appears ever to have been charged to this genus on western — 
ranges; and if saponin be present in western specimens, it is evi- © 
dently in such small quantity as to be physiologically negligible. A 
number of the species are in popular cultivation as ornamentals. | 
Mountain snowberry (Symphoricarpos oreophilus) (fig. 39) is — 
frequently called buckbrush, a name indiscriminately applied in the © 
West to a great many different shrubs. Deer brush, Indian currant, — 
and waxberry are also in rather common use for this species. It is © 
a spreading shrub, averaging about 2 to 4 feet high, and ranges from © 
Colorado to New Mexico, California, eastern Oregon, and Idaho. 
The species is essentially montane, occurring in Oregon at 4,500 or — 
5,000 feet elevation, in the Sierra Nevada at 5,000 to 10,000 feet, in © 
the mountains of Colorado and Utah chiefly between 6,500 and 9,500 ~ 
feet, and in New Mexico and Arizona from about 7,000 to 10,000 — 
feet. It occurs on all slopes and in both moist and fairly dry sites, — 
but usually on sandy or clay loam soils, though sometimes in moist i 
rich black alluvial bottom lands. It is often abundant, sometimes — 
occurs in almost pure stands, and grows in more or less scattered 
clumps conducive to good utilization by livestock. In Utah and © 
western Colorado, mountain snowberry is probably most familiar — 
as an important component of the aspen type, but elsewhere more — 
often associated with such conifers as western yellow pine, Engel- 
mann spruce, blue spruce, white fir, and Douglas fir. It is seldom ~ 
found in dense shade, but usually grows in the more open forest, or — 
at the borders of timber surrounding parks and other openings, as- — 
ee with lupines, various grasses, oaks, chokecherry, and service-_ 
erry. 
As browse, mountain snowberry is valuable and often heavily 
cropped by all classes of livestock and by deer. Relatively its palata-— 
bility is doubtless inferior to such rosaceous genera as mountain-— 
mahogany (Cercocarpus) and the highly palatable species of service- 
berry (Amelanchier). However, its relatively good palatability, © 
combined with the species’ abundance, wide distribution, accessi-— 
bility, growth form, abundant and ready production of succulent — 
root shoots, large and copious leafage, and excellent powers of 
reproduction, both sexual and vegetative by underground shoots, 
