A tree, occasionally 25° high, with a trunk often inclining, usually much contorted, 2′—10′ in diameter and 6°—8° long, stout wide-spreading branches, and stout branchlets, hoary-tomentose when they first appear, marked by numerous small scattered lenticels, bright reddish brown during two or three years, ultimately dark gray-brown and conspicuously roughened by the enlarged ring-like leaf-scars. Bark light gray, sometimes slightly broken by shallow fissures and marked by irregular cream-colored blotches.
Distribution. Steep sides of a deep narrow arroyo on the south coast of Santa Catalina Island, California.
2. [Cercocarpus alnifolius] Rydb.
Cercocarpus parvifolius Sarg., in part, not Nutt.
Leaves occasionally persistent until late in the spring, oval to slightly obovate, rounded or rarely acute at apex, rounded or cuneate at base, and coarsely serrate above the middle with broad apiculate teeth, when they unfold covered above with soft white hairs and pale and villose on the midrib and veins below, and at maturity thick, glabrous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, pale and yellow-green on the lower surface, 1½′—2½′ long, and 1′—2′ wide, with a stout midrib and 6—7 pairs of slender prominent veins; petioles stout, sparingly villose early in the season, soon glabrous, ⅓′—½′ long; stipules ovate, abruptly long-pointed, covered with silky white hairs. Flowers on slender hairy pedicels ⅓′—½′ long, in 2—15 usually 4 or 5-flowered clusters; calyx-tube villose, about 5/12′ long, the limb villose on the outer surface, ¼′ broad. Fruit: mature calyx-tube many-nerved, deeply cleft at apex, villose-pubescent, dark chestnut-brown, ⅓′—½′ long; akene covered with long silky hairs; style 2′—2½′ in length.
A tree, 12°—20° high, with one or two or three trunks, occasionally 8′ in diameter, small erect and spreading branches forming a narrow round-topped head, and slender branchlets green and sparingly villose when they first appear, soon becoming glabrous, and in their second year chestnut-brown and lustrous and marked by minute pale lenticels. Bark about ¼′ thick, dark reddish brown, fissured and divided into small closely appressed scales.
Distribution. Hillsides, Descanso Cañon, about a mile and a half up the coast west of Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, and on Santa Cruz Island, California.
3. [Cercocarpus betuloides] Nutt.
Cercocarpus parvifolius var. betuloides Sarg.