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.
6. AMELANCHIER Med.
Trees or shrubs, with scaly bark, slender terete branchlets, acute or acuminate buds, with imbricated scales, those of the inner rows accrescent and bright-colored, and fibrous roots. Leaves alternate, conduplicate in the bud, simple, entire or serrate, penniveined, petiolate, deciduous; stipules free from the petioles, linear, elongated, rose color, caducous. Flowers in erect or terminal racemes, on slender bibracteolate pedicels developed from the axils of lanceolate acuminate pink deciduous bracts; calyx-tube campanulate or urceolate, the lobes acute or acuminate, recurved, persistent on the fruit; disk green, entire or crenulate, nectariferous; petals white, obovate-oblong, spatulate or ligulate, rounded, acute or truncate at apex, gradually contracted below into a short slender claw; stamens usually 20, inserted in 3 rows, those of the outer row opposite the petals; filaments subulate, persistent on the fruit, anthers oblong; ovary inferior or superior, more or less adnate to the calyx-tube, the summit glabrous or tomentose, 5-celled, each cell incompletely divided by a false partition; styles 2—5, connate below, spreading and dilated above into a broad truncate stigma; ovules 2 in each cell, erect; micropyle inferior. Fruit subglobose or pyriform, dark blue or bluish black, often covered with a glaucous bloom, open at the summit, the cavity surrounded by the lobes of the calyx and the remnants of the filaments; flesh sweet, dry or juicy; carpels membranaceous, free or connate, glabrous, or villose at apex. Seeds 10 or often 5 by the abortion of 1 of the ovules in each cell, ovoid-ellipsoid; seed-coat coriaceous, dark chestnut-brown, mucilaginous; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons plano-convex; radicle inferior.
Amelanchier is widely distributed with many species through the temperate, northern and mountainous regions of eastern and western North America; it occurs with one species in southern Europe, northern Africa and southwestern Asia, and with another in central and western China and Japan. Only three species, all North American, attain the habit and size of trees. The fruit of nearly all the species is more or less succulent, and several are cultivated in gardens for the beauty of their early and conspicuous flowers, and occasionally for their fruit. The name is of doubtful origin.
CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT SPECIES.
Leaves finely serrate, acute or acuminate at apex; flowers on elongated pedicels in nodding racemes; summit of the ovary glabrous; winter-buds lanceolate, long-acuminate. Leaves densely white tomentose while young; flowers appearing before or as the leaves unfold in silky tomentose racemes; calyx-lobes ovate, acuminate or nearly triangular and acute; fruit dry and tasteless.1. [A. canadensis] (A). Leaves slightly pubescent as they unfold, soon glabrous, dark red-brown while young; flowers appearing after the leaves are nearly half grown in glabrous racemes; calyx-lobes lanceolate or subulate, long-acuminate; fruit sweet and succulent.2. [A. laevis] (A). Leaves coarsely serrate usually only above the middle, rounded at apex, oblong-ovate or oval; flowers on shorter pedicels in short erect or spreading racemes; summit of the ovary covered with hoary tomentum; winter-buds ovoid or ellipsoid, acute or short-acuminate.3. [A. florida] (F, C, G).
1. [Amelanchier canadensis] Med. Service Berry. Shad Bush.
Amelanchier canadensis var. tomentula Sarg.