Leaves oval or oblong, rounded or contracted into a short point at apex, and rounded, subcordate or cuneate at base, with slightly thickened revolute entire or occasionally on young plants sharply serrate margins, when they unfold light green or often pink, especially on the lower surface, and glabrous or slightly puberulous, and at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, pale or often nearly white below, 3′—5′ long and 1½′—3′ wide, with a thick pale midrib and conspicuously reticulated veinlets; persistent until the early summer of their second year and then turning orange and scarlet and falling gradually and irregularly; petioles stout, grooved, ½′—1′ in length, often slightly wing-margined toward the apex; often producing late in summer a second crop of smaller leaves. Flowers about ⅓′ long, with a glabrous ovary, appearing from March to May on short slender puberulous pedicels from the axils of acute scarious bracts ciliate on the margins, in spicate pubescent racemes forming a cluster 5′—6′ long and broad. Fruit ripening in the autumn, subglobose or occasionally obovoid or oval, ½′ long, bright orange-red, with thin glandular flesh and a 5-celled more or less perfectly developed thin-walled cartilaginous stone; seeds several in each cell, tightly pressed together and angled, dark brown and pilose.
A tree, 80°—125° high, with a tall straight trunk 4°—5° in diameter, stout upright or spreading branches forming a narrow oblong or broad round-topped head, and slender branchlets light red, pea-green, or orange-colored and glabrous when they first appear, or on vigorous young plants sometimes covered with pale scattered deciduous hairs, becoming in their first winter bright reddish brown. Winter-buds obtuse, ⅓′ long, with numerous imbricated broadly-ovate bright brown scales keeled on the back, apiculate at apex, and slightly ciliate. Bark of young stems and of the branches smooth, bright red, separating into large thin scales, becoming on old trunks ⅓′—½′ thick, dark reddish brown, and covered with small thick plate-like scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, light brown shaded with red, with thin lighter colored sapwood of 8—12 layers of annual growth; used for furniture and largely for charcoal. The bark is sometimes employed in tanning leather.
Distribution. High well-drained slopes usually in rich soil or occasionally in gravelly valleys; islands at Seymore Narrows, and southward through the coast region of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon; over the coast ranges of northern California, extending east to Mt. Shasta and south along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada from altitudes of 2500°—4000° to Placer County; on many of the coast ranges south of San Francisco Bay to the mountains of southern California; common and of its largest size in the Redwood-forests of northwestern California; much smaller north of California; rare on the Sierra Nevada and southward except on the Santa Cruz Mountains, and often shrubby in habit.
Occasionally cultivated in the gardens of western and southern Europe.
2. [Arbutus texana] Buckl. Madroña.
Arbutus xalapensis S. Watson, not H. B. K.
Leaves oval, ovate, or lanceolate, rounded, acute and often apiculate at apex, and rounded or cuneate at base, with slightly thickened usually entire or remotely crenulate-toothed or coarsely serrate margins, often tinged with red when they unfold and pubescent below, and at maturity thick and coriaceous, dark green and glabrous on the upper surface, pale and usually slightly pubescent on the lower surface, 1′—3′ long and ⅔′—1½′ wide, with a thick midrib often villose-pubescent below; petioles stout, pubescent, sometimes becoming nearly glabrous, 1′—1½′ in length. Flowers ¼′ long, with ciliate calyx-lobes and a pubescent ovary, appearing in March on stout recurved hoary-tomentose club-shaped pedicels from the axils of ovate acute hoary-tomentose often persistent bracts, in compact conic hoary-tomentose panicles 2½′ long. Fruit pubescent until half grown, becoming glabrous, usually produced very sparingly, ripening in summer, dark red, ⅓′ in diameter, with thin granular flesh and a rather thick more or less completely formed stone; seeds numerous in each cell, compressed, puberulous.
A tree, in Texas rarely more than 18°—20° high, with a short often crooked trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, separating a foot or two above the ground into several stout spreading branches, and branchlets light red and thickly coated with pubescence when they first appear, becoming dark red-brown and covered with small plate-like scales; often a broad irregularly shaped bush, with numerous contorted stems. Winter-buds about ⅛′ long, with hoary tomentose scales, the outer ovate, acute, the inner obovate and rounded at apex. Bark of young stems and of the branches thin, tinged with red, separating into large papery scales exposing the light red or flesh-colored inner bark, becoming at the base of old trunks sometimes ¼′ thick, deeply furrowed, dark reddish brown, and broken into thick square plates. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, brown tinged with red, with a lighter colored sapwood of 10—12 layers of annual growth; sometimes used in Texas for the handles of small tools and in the manufacture of mathematical instruments.