Beyond being fascinating and distinctive small trees in their own right, these individuals of the venerable grove of Cercocarpus ledifolius at Bald Mountain caught my attention for the strange, densely chaotic vegetative growth of the inflorescence galls that infested them...clearly visible in the last two photos of this series.

As a taxonomic aside...note that although all the vouchers listed on CalFlora for the Bald Mnt area refer to the nominate variety, the abaxially glabrous leaves, with midrib and veins clearly visible...made these plants go clearly to Cercocarpus ledifolius var. intermontanus in the Jepson eFlora key (see couplet 3). Curious about this discrepancy, I dug a bit and found the 1987 paper by Holmgren where variety intermontanus was published. All the vouchers on the CalFlora page were made before 1987...mystery solved! :-) I'm guessing the varietal ID in Alison Sheehey's CalFlora observation was made in deference to the preceding ID's on the CalFlora page...I almost did the same thing! (One hesitates to disagree with the likes of Twisselmann or Shevock :-)