3. UMBELLULARIA Nutt.
A pungent aromatic tree, with dark brown scaly bark, slender terete branchlets marked in their second and third years by small semicircular or nearly triangular elevated leaf-scars displaying a horizontal row of minute fibro-vascular bundle-scars, naked buds, and thick fleshy brown roots. Leaves alternate, involute in the bud, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, acute or rounded at the narrow apex, cuneate or somewhat rounded at base, entire with thickened slightly revolute margins, petiolate, coated when they appear on the lower surface with pale soft pubescence and puberulous on the upper surface, at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, dull and paler below, with a slender light yellow midrib, and remote, obscure, arcuate veins more or less united near the margins, and connected by conspicuous reticulate veinlets. Flowers perfect in axillary stalked many-flowered umbels, inclosed in the bud by an involucre of 5 or 6 imbricated broadly ovate or obovate pointed concave yellow caducous scales, the latest umbels subsessile at the base of terminal leaf-buds; pedicels slender, puberulous, without bractlets, from the axils of obovate membranaceous puberulous deciduous bracts decreasing in size from the outer to the inner; calyx divided almost to the base into 6 nearly equal broadly obovate rounded pale yellow lobes spreading and reflexed after anthesis; stamens inserted on the short slightly thickened tube of the calyx; filaments flat, glabrous, pale yellow, rather shorter than the anthers, those of the third series furnished near the base with 2 conspicuous stipitate orange-colored orbicular flattened glands; anthers oblong, flattened, light yellow, those of the first and second series introrse, those of the third series extrorse; stamens of the fourth series reduced to minute ovate acute yellow staminodes; ovary sessile, ovoid, often more or less gibbous, glabrous, abruptly contracted into a stout columnar style rather shorter than the lobes of the calyx and crowned by a simple capitate discoid stigma. Fruit ovoid, surrounded at base by the enlarged and thickened truncate or lobed tube of the calyx, yellow-green sometimes more or less tinged with purple; pericarp thin and fleshy. Seed ovoid, light brown; testa separable into 2 coats, the outer thick, hard, and woody, the inner thin and papery, closely investing the embryo, chestnut-brown and lustrous on the inner surface.
Umbellularia consists of a single species.
The generic name, a diminutive of umbella, relates to the character of the inflorescence.
1. [Umbellularia californica] Nutt. California Laurel. Spice-tree.
Leaves 2′—5′ long, ½′—1½′ wide, unfolding in winter or early in the spring and continuing to appear as the branches lengthen until late in the autumn; beginning to fade during the summer, turning to a beautiful yellow or orange color and falling one by one during their second season, or often remaining on the branches until the sixth year; petioles 1/10′—⅕′ in length. Flowers appearing in January before the unfolding of the young leaves, the umbels on peduncles sometimes 1′ in length. Fruit about 1′ long, in clusters of 2 or 3, on elongated thickened pedicels, persistent on the branch after the fruit ripens and falls late in the autumn; seeds germinating soon after they reach the ground, the fruit remaining below the surface of the soil and attached to the young plant until midsummer.
A tree, usually 20°—75°, occasionally 100°—175° high, with a trunk 3°—6° in diameter, sometimes tall and straight but usually divided near the ground into several large diverging stems, stout spreading or rarely pendulous (var. pendula Redh.) branches forming a broad round-topped head, and branchlets light green and coated with soft pale pubescence when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous and yellow-green, and in their second and third years light brown tinged with red; at high altitudes, and in southern California much smaller; often reduced to a large or small shrub, or on bluffs facing the ocean to broad mats of prostrate stems. Bark ¾′—1′ thick, dark brown tinged with red, separating on the surface into thin appressed scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light rich brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood of 30—40 layers of annual growth; the most valuable wood produced in the forests of Pacific North America for the interior finish of houses and for furniture. The leaves yield by distillation a pungent volatile oil, and from the fruit a fat containing umbellulic acid has been obtained.
Distribution. Valley of Coos River, Oregon, southward through the California coast ranges and along the high western slopes of the Sierra Nevada to the southern slopes of the San Bernardino Mountains up to altitudes of 2500°; usually near the banks of water-courses and sometimes on low hills; common where it can obtain an abundant supply of water; most abundant and of its largest size in the rich valleys of southwestern Oregon, forming with the Broad-leaved Maple a considerable part of the forest growth.