The flowers, which are produced before the leaves, from March to May, are white, fading to rose-color. By August and September, the bushes are loaded with the handsome fruit, richly mottled with red, yellow, and purple; and these colors are duplicated in the autumn foliage, which in the North becomes very brilliant.
This fruit is excellent for canning, preserving, and making into jelly. Many families make annual pilgrimages to these wild-plum orchards of the mountains and carry away bushels of the fruit; but even then countless tons of it go to waste.
P. demissa, Walpers,—the wild cherry or choke-cherry,—is found upon mountains throughout the State, but less abundantly near the coast. Its small white flowers grow in racemes three or four inches long, and these ripen into the pretty shining black cherries, half an inch in diameter. It often covers acres upon acres of rough land, and commences to bear when but two feet high.
Housewives of our mountain districts make a marmalade of the fruit, which has a peculiarly delicious, tart flavor.
ELLISIA.
Ellisia chrysanthemifolia, Benth. Baby-eyes or Waterleaf Family.
More or less hairy. Stems.—Loosely branching; a foot or so high. Leaves.—Mostly opposite; auricled at base; twice- or thrice-parted into many short, small lobes. Flowers.—In loose racemes; white; three lines or so across. Calyx.—Five-cleft; without appendages at the sinuses; almost equaling the corolla. Corolla.—Open-campanulate; having ten minute scales at base within. Stamens.—Five. Ovary.—One-celled; globose. Style slender; two-cleft. Hab.—San Francisco to San Diego.
These little plants, with delicately dissected leaves, are common in moist, shaded localities; but, unfortunately, their foliage has a very strong odor, which just escapes being agreeable. Their general aspect is somewhat similar to that of some of the small species of Nemophila; but the lack of appendages upon the calyx reveals their separate identity. It blooms freely from March to June, and is especially abundant southward.