WATER-HOLLY. MAHONIA.
Berberis nervosa, Pursh. Barberry Family.
Stem.—Simple; a foot or so high; bearing at summit a crown of large leaves, mixed with many dry, chaffy, persistent bracts. Leaves.—One or two feet long, with from eleven to seventeen ovate, acuminate, prickly, somewhat palmately nerved leaflets. Flowers.—Yellow, in elongated, clustered racemes. Bractlets, sepals, petals, and stamens six, standing in front of one another. Anthers two-celled; opening by uplifting valves. Ovary.—One-celled. Style short or none. Fruit.—Dark-blue, glaucous berries; four lines in diameter. Hab.—Deep coast woods, from Monterey to Vancouver Island.
The water-holly is one of the beautiful plants to be found in our deep coast woods within the cool influence of the sea-fogs. The plants are very symmetrical, with their crown of dark, shining leaves, with numerous prickly leaflets, and in spring, when the long graceful racemes of yellow flowers are produced in abundance, and hang amid and below the leaves, they are very ornamental. The stems are densely clothed with numerous dry, awl-shaped scales, an inch or more long.
Another species—B. repens—the creeping barberry, or Oregon grape, is a low, prostrate shrub, less than a foot high, with from three to seven leaflets. These leaflets are pinnately veined, and have not the beautiful, shining upper surface of those of the water-holly, and the few racemes of yellow flowers which terminate the branches are quite short—only an inch or two long. This is found throughout the State and northward upon rocky hills.