50 
THE AMEEICAN BOTANIST. 
Skeels where we hope it may continue to produce its 
curious blossoms in other years. A number of the largest 
flowers were also preserved in formalin. 
SALAL 
BY W. W. MUNSON. 
LAST summer along the upper reaches of the Sacramento 
River and in the foot-hills of Mt. Shasta I daily saw 
a low shrubby plant with large, thick, shining, leathery 
leaves and tough, wiry stems, ahvays in company with 
the Oregon grape. It often bore racemes of ripening fruit 
which had a familiar look, but I could not make it out. 
Though I asked people nobody had a name for it, howeVer 
All across Oregon wherever I stopped— at Grant's 
Pass. Ashland, Glendale, Salem, Portland — this little 
shrub, getting taller as I went north, was the most 
common of the un ler-brush until one dav, in a partial 
clearing out from old Fort Vancouver, Washington, I 
found a spray of flowers on ray little stranger. The 
globes seemed to have a home-like look, recalling our east- 
ern wintergreen. Then Gmiltberia quickly followed men- 
tally, and it came to me with a rush that this was the 
very thing that Lewis and Clark found about their feet all 
along their way after they crossed the mountains, and the 
one that the Indians told them was Shallon. (I didn't 
have any Indians to tell me. ) 
I threw up my hat, laughed till I cried, and shouted 
"Glorv-" all alone there in the deep woods of the north- 
west territorv', where the books say it is found, At last, 
after many 3'ears of longing, I have found "Shallon" in 
flower and in fruit! (I read Lewis and Clark's diary of 
their trip, every word of it, more than fifty years ago.) 
As I remember, Fremont, and perhaps others, under- 
stood the Indians to say "Sallon," and "Salal" and 
Shalal" when they w^ere asked what they called it. But 
whatever, botanists have settled on Gaultheria Shallon 
for its name. 
