''Arctostaphylos viridissima'' 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 whitehair manzanita and McMinn's 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 ...

Santa Cruz Island Santa Cruz Island (Spanish: ''Isla Santa Cruz'', Chumash: ''Limuw'') is located off the southwestern coast of Ventura, California, United States. It is the largest island in California and largest of the eight islands in the Channel Islands a ...

, one of the

Channel Islands of California The Channel Islands () are an eight-island archipelago located within the Southern California Bight in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California. The four Northern Channel Islands are part of the Transverse Ranges geologic province, and ...

Description

''Arctostaphylos viridissima'' is a

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 ...

varying in shape and size. It may be a matted bush one metre (~3 ft) tall to a spreading treelike form over 4 metres (~12 ft) in height. Its stem and branches are covered in peeling red bark and its smaller twigs are woolly and bear long white bristles. The leaves are oval in shape, fuzzy when new and green and shiny when mature, reaching 3.5 cm. The

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 ...

is a dense cluster of urn-shaped manzanita flowers. The fruit is a fuzzy

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'') ...

just over a centimeter wide.

References

External links

Jepson Manual Treatment of Arctostaphylos viridissima''USDA Plants ProfileArctostaphylos viridissima'' — UC Photo gallery
viridissima Endemic flora of California Natural history of the California chaparral and woodlands Natural history of the Channel Islands of California Plants described in 1933 {{Ericaceae-stub