The wood-strawberry—F. Californica—is very common in the Coast Ranges; but for the most part it is dry and flavorless.

[WAKE-ROBIN--Trillium ovatum]

MANZANITA. BEARBERRY.

Arctostaphylos manzanita, Parry. Heath Family.

Shrubs three to twenty-five feet high, with purple-brown bark. Leaves.—Pale. Flowers.—White or pinkish; in crowded clusters. Corolla.—Four or five lines long; campanulate. Stamens.—Ten; filaments dilated and bearded at base; anthers two-celled, opening terminally, each cell furnished with a long downward-pointing horn. Ovary.—Globose; five to ten-celled. Style simple. Fruit.—Six lines in diameter, containing several bony nutlets. Syn.—Arctostaphylos pungens, HBK. Hab.—Throughout the State.

Of all our shrubs, the manzanita is the most beautiful and the best known. Sometimes as early as Christmas it may be found in full bloom, when its dense crown of pale foliage, surmounting the rich purple-brown stems, is thickly sown with the little clusters of fragrant waxen bells. After the blossoms have passed away, the shrubs put forth numerous brilliant scarlet or crimson shoots, which at a little distance look like a strange and entirely new kind of blossoming. The manzanita is closely allied to the madroño, and resembles it in many ways, particularly in the annual peeling of its rich red bark and in the form of its flowers.

The Greek generic name, translated into English, becomes "bearberry." The pretty Spanish name—from manzana, apple, and the diminutive, ita,—was bestowed by the early Spanish-Californians, who recognized the resemblance of the fruit to tiny apples.

We have a dozen or more species of Arctostaphylos, but A. manzanita is the commonest of them all. It varies greatly in size and habit. In localities most favorable it becomes a large, erect shrub, with many clustered trunks, while in the Sierras it finds but a precarious footing among the granite rocks, often covering their surfaces with its small tortuous, stiff branches. The leaves, by a twisting of their stalks, assume a vertical position on the branches, a habit which enables many plants of dry regions to avoid unnecessary evaporation.