''Arctostaphylos silvicola'' is a species of

manzanita Manzanita is a common name for many species of the genus ''Arctostaphylos''. They are evergreen shrubs or small trees present in the chaparral biome of western North America, where they occur from Southern British Columbia and Washington to Or ...

known by the common names Bonny Doon or silverleaf manzanita. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

to the sandhills of the southern

Santa Cruz Mountains The Santa Cruz Mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are a mountain range in central and Northern California, United States. They form a ridge down the San Francisco Peninsula, south of San Francisco. They separate the Pacific Ocean from ...

in California's Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties.

Description

This is a large

shrub A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...

growing at least a meter tall and known to exceed six meters in height, looking much like a tree. The bark is dark red and smooth. The leaves are greenish gray in color and sometimes slightly woolly. They are oval in shape and up to 3.5 centimeters long. The shrub flowers in

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. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

s of long, urn-shaped manzanita flowers and produces

drupe In botany, a drupe (or stone fruit) is an indehiscent fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a single shell (the ''pit'', ''stone'', or '' pyrena'') of hardened endocarp with a seed (''kernel'') ...

s 6 to 12 millimeters wide.

Habitat

''Arctostaphylos silvicola'' grows in

coniferous forest Conifers are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All exta ...

and

chaparral Chaparral ( ) is a shrubland plant community and geographical feature found primarily in the U.S. state of California, in southern Oregon, and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean c ...

on inland marine sands.

Conservation Status

Silverleaf is listed as "fairly endangered" by the

California Native Plant Society The California Native Plant Society (CNPS) is a California environmental non-profit organization (501(c)3) that seeks to increase understanding of California's native flora and to preserve it for future generations. The mission of CNPS is to con ...

. The main threats to the species are habitat loss through

sand mining Sand mining is the extraction of sand, mainly through an open pit (or sand pit) but sometimes mined from beaches and inland dunes or dredged from ocean and river beds. Sand is often used in manufacturing, for example as an abrasive or in concret ...

and development. A portion of the habitat is protected by the

Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve The Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve is a nature preserve of in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, United States. The reserve protects several rare and endangered plant and animal species within an area known as the Santa Cruz Sandhills, an an ...

References

External links

Jepson Manual Treatment - ''Arctostaphylos silvicola''USDA Plants Profile: ''Arctostaphylos silvicola''Local Plant Profile - ''Arctostaphylos silvicola''''Arctostaphylos silvicola'' — U.C. Photo gallery
{{Taxonbar, from=Q4787703 silvicola Endemic flora of California Natural history of the California chaparral and woodlands Natural history of Santa Cruz County, California ~ Plants described in 1938