Form and Function

Cercocarpus or Mountain mahogany have evolved to thrive in the semi-arid west, filling many niches from Mexico to Canada and from California to the Eastern slopes of the Rockies. One can find them from the shrub belts just above the warm deserts to treeline with Pinus longavea in Nevada.

Its hardly surprising they make such beautiful ecologically smart landscape plants that are only beginning to enjoy their heyday in cultivation.

Here is a beautiful specimen with its silvery sensuous trunk in Dryland Mesa at DBG