Arctostaphylos parryana
Encyclopedia
Arctostaphylos parryana, with the common name Parry manzanita, is a species of manzanita
Arctostaphylos
Arctostaphylos is a genus of plants comprised by the manzanitas and bearberries. They are shrubs or small trees.There are about 60 species of Arctostaphylos, ranging from ground-hugging arctic, coastal, and mountain species to small trees up to 6 m tall. Most are evergreen , with small oval...

.

Description

Arctostaphylos parryana is an erect manzanita, standing on red-barked stems and reaching up to two meters in height. The leaves are bright green, generally oval in shape and pointed. The small pink-tinted white flowers are borne in densely-bunched inflorescence
Inflorescence
An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Strictly, it is the part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed and which is accordingly modified...

s. The fruit is a rounded drupe
Drupe
In botany, a drupe is a fruit in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a shell of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. These fruits develop from a single carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries...

 which contains two or more seeds which have fused into one body.

The fruit was a food of the Luiseño of Southern California.

Distribution

This shrub is endemic to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, where it grows in the western section of the Transverse Ranges
Transverse Ranges
The Transverse Ranges are a group of mountain ranges of southern California, in the Pacific Coast Ranges physiographic region that runs along the Pacific coast from Alaska to Mexico in North America. The Transverse Ranges begin at the southern end of the California Coast Ranges and lie between...

, from coastal Santa Barbara County
Santa Barbara County, California
Santa Barbara County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California, on the Pacific coast. As of 2010 the county had a population of 423,895. The county seat is Santa Barbara and the largest city is Santa Maria.-History:...

 to the San Gabriel Mountains
San Gabriel Mountains
The San Gabriel Mountains Range is located in northern Los Angeles County and western San Bernardino County, California, United States. The mountain range lies between the Los Angeles Basin and the Mojave Desert, with Interstate 5 to the west and Interstate 15 to the east...

.

This is a manzanita of chaparral
Chaparral
Chaparral is a shrubland or heathland plant community found primarily in the U.S. state of California and in the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula, Mexico...

 and low-elevation coniferous forest ecosystems.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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