5. HETEROMELES Roem.
A tree, with smooth pale aromatic bark, stout terete branchlets pubescent or puberulous while young, acute winter-buds covered by loosely imbricated red scales, and fibrous roots. Leaves oblong-lanceolate, acute at the ends, sharply and remotely serrate with rigid glandular teeth, or rarely almost entire, dark green and lustrous above, paler below, feather-veined, with a broad midrib and conspicuous reticulate veinlets; petiolate with stout petioles often furnished near the apex with 1 or 2 slender glandular teeth; stipules free from the petioles, subulate, rigid, minute, early deciduous. Flowers on short stout pedicels, in ample tomentose terminal corymbose leafy panicles, their bracts and bractlets acute, minute, usually tipped with a small gland, caducous; calyx-tube turbinate, tomentose below, glabrate above, the lobes short, nearly triangular, spreading, persistent; disk cup-shaped, obscurely sulcate; petals flabellate, erose-denticulate or emarginate at apex, contracted below into a short broad claw, thick, glabrous, pure white; stamens 10, inserted in 1 row with the petals in pairs opposite the calyx-lobes; filaments subulate, incurved, anthers oblong-ovoid, emarginate; carpels 2, adnate to the calyx-tube, and slightly united into a subglobose tomentose nearly superior ovary; styles distinct, slightly spreading, enlarged at apex into a broad truncate stigma; ovules 2 in each cell, ascending; raphe dorsal; micropyle inferior. Fruit obovoid, fleshy, the thickened calyx-tube connate to the middle only with the membranaceous carpels coated above with long white hairs filling the cavity closed by the infolding of the thickened persistent calyx-lobes, their tips erect and crowning the fruit. Seed usually solitary in each cell, ovoid, obtuse, slightly ridged on the back; seed-coat membranaceous, slightly punctate, light brown; hilum orbicular, conspicuous; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons plano-convex; radicle short, inferior.
The genus is represented by a single species of western North America.
The generic name, from ἔτερος and μῆλον, is in reference to its difference from related genera.
1. [Heteromeles arbutifolia] Roem. Tollon. Toyon.
Leaves appearing with the flowers in early summer, 3′—4′ long, 1′—1½′ wide, usually persistent during at least two winters; petioles ½′—⅔′ in length. Flowers opening from June to August in clusters 4′—6′ across and often more or less hidden by young lateral branchlets rising above them. Fruit ripening in November and December, mealy, astringent and acid, scarlet or rarely yellow, ⅓′ long, remaining on the branches until late in the winter.
A tree, sometimes 30° high, with a straight trunk 12′—18′ in diameter, dividing a few feet above the ground into many erect branches forming a handsome narrow round-topped head, and slender branchlets covered at first with pale pubescence, in their first winter dark red and slightly puberulous, ultimately becoming darker and glabrous. Winter-buds ¼′ long. Bark ½′—⅔′ thick, light gray, with a generally smooth surface roughened by obscure reticulate ridges. Wood very heavy, hard, close-grained, dark red-brown, with thin lighter colored sapwood of 7 or 8 layers of annual growth. The fruit-covered branches are gathered in large quantities and used in California in Christmas decorations.
Distribution. Usually in the neighborhood of streams or on dry hills and especially on their northern slopes, and often on steep sea-cliffs; California: coast region from Mendocino County to Lower California; most common and of its largest size on the islands off the California coast; on the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and on the San Bernardino Mountains up to altitudes of 2000° above the sea and usually shrubby; very abundant and forming groves of considerable extent on the island of Santa Catalina.
Occasionally cultivated as an ornamental plant in California, and rarely in the countries of southern Europe.