Hooray for Hollywood

Posted on November 26, 2003 in Fact-Dropping Plants

One of the signs of late autumn in Southern California is the eruption of the red berries of the Toyon bush, also known as the Christmas Berry or Hollywood. This is the plant that gave the subdivision its name. The hills above Griffith Park and about the Hollywood sign have many clumps of this short-trunked tree, a key species of the California chaparral. I do not know what native Americans did with the tiny berries which Peter Raven describes as “exactly comparable to tiny apples”. White people used them to make Christmas wreaths, a practice which has been effectively outlawed by measures designed to protect the plant.

I saw this plant and many others like it in Whiting Ranch Wilderness, just beneath the crest of the hilltop where we live. It is not a thing of glitter and tinsel, but red, red fire.

I have not heard that the berries are edible: therefore, I would not chance them.