Description: Shrub or small tree with short trunk or several branches turning and twisting from base, often vinelike and leaning or sprawling, the lower branches lying on the ground and often layering, forming impenetrable thickets.

Height: 7.5 m

Diameter: 20 cm

Leaves: Opposite; 6-11 cm long and wide. Rounded, with seven to eleven long-pointed lobes, sharply double-toothed, with seven to eleven main veins from notched base; long petioles with enlarged bases joined. Bright green above, paler with tufts of hair in vein angles beneath; turning orange and red in autumn.

Bark: Grey or Brown; smooth or finely fissured.

Shoots: Green to reddish brown, with whitish bloom; slender.

Flowers: 12 mm wide; spreading purple sepals and whitish petals; in broad, branched clusters at end of short twigs; with new leaves in spring; usually male and female on same plant.

Fruit: 4 cm long, paired, long-winged keys, spreading almost horizontally; reddish when young; one-seeded; maturing in autumn.

Habitat: Moist soils, especially along shaded stream banks; in understory of coniferous forests. California plant communities: Mixed Evergreen Forest (m19), Redwood Forest (m12), Yellow Pine Forest (m14).

Range: Pacific Coast from SW British Columbia south to N California; to 1500m.

This handsome tree is dramatically coloured in most seasons with bright green foliage turning orange and red in autumn, purple and white flowers in spring, and young red fruit in summer. The seeds are consumed by songbirds, game birds and large and small mammals.

Introduced to the UK by Douglas in 1826. Groups of specimens fluorish in the shady autumn bays at Thorp Perrow arboretum near Bedale in N. Yorkshire, and set seed freely.

Information: Audubon (1980), Bean I (1976).

Sources: Mallet Court Nurseries, Curry Mallet, near Taunton, Somerset; seed collected at Thorp Perrow Arboretum, Bedale, North Yorkshire.

Purchased: 1993.

Planted: 1993.

Progress: One of the original trees failed to compete with hawthorn roots from a nearby hedge, but the other three plantings urvived for some time. However, they do not seem to like it here, hardly putting on any new growth, and looking decidedly tatty by the end of the growing season, as well as looking stressed at times during the summer. Possibly the site is still too exposed or dry for them and we will have more success as the bigger trees grow up and provide high canopy and more shelter from wind. Both remaining trees in 2004 look better than they have done previously, perhaps because the summer was very wet. The bigger one, perhaps misplaced among eastern North America trees, has reached 1.4m in 2004.

Seedlings from Thorp Perrow seed seem to do well for a year or two under glass, but then slow down whether kept inside or out.

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