SILK-TASSEL TREE. QUININE-BUSH.
Garrya elliptica, Dougl. Dogwood Family.
Shrubs five to eight feet high. Leaves.—Leathery; white-woolly beneath; wavy-margined. Flowers.—Of two kinds on separate shrubs; in solitary or clustered catkins; and without petals. Staminate catkins.—Two to ten inches long, consisting of a flexile chain of funnel-form bracts, depending one from another; each having six flowers like clappers. These flowers with four hairy sepals and four stamens with distinct filaments. Pistillate catkins.—Of similar structure but stouter, more rigid. Their flowers without floral envelopes; pistils two; fleshy and hairy; stigmas filiform; dark. Hab.—Near the Coast from Monterey County to Washington.
This shrub might easily be mistaken for one of our young live-oaks, with its leathery leaves and gray bark; but the leaves are opposite, and not alternate, as with the oaks. The bark and leaves have an intensely bitter principle, similar to quinine and equally efficacious.
Early in February, after the first spell of balmy weather, the bushes put forth their flowers, and then they are exceedingly beautiful. The long pale-green chains at the ends of all the branches hang limp and flexile, shaken with every breath of wind, or, falling over other branches, drape and festoon the whole shrub exquisitely. The catkins of the female shrub are stouter and more rigid than those of the male; but when the fruit is mature, they lengthen out into beautifully tinted clusters of little papery-coated grapes, which are quite attractive in themselves. This is cultivated as an ornamental shrub in England.
G. Fremonti, Torr., another species, is distinguished by having its leaves pointed at both ends, not wavy-margined, and not permanently woolly; and also by its solitary catkins. This is the shrub usually spoken of as "quinine-bush," "fever-bush," etc., and whose leaves were used as a substitute for quinine in the early days among the miners. It is said that its roots, left in the ground after the cutting of the shrub, become marbled with green, and are then very beautiful for inlaying in ornamental woodwork.
![[SILK-TASSEL TREE—Garrya elliptica.]](#3624944100741987669_f144.png.id-7466433008413861993.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}