Vine Hill Manzanita

Low mounds of Vine Hill manzanita (Arctostaphylos densiflora) at the Vine Hill Preserve in Sonoma County, California, the last remaining population of this species in the wild. Author’sphotograph
Vine Hill manzanita is the source of some of the most widely planted and adaptable native cultivars in California, yet the species is one of the rarest plants in nature.
In the 1800s, early settlers in Northern California's Sonoma County found the gently rolling sand hills of the Vine Hill area, between the towns of Sebastopol and Forestville, to be ideal for orchards and vineyards. When Santa Rosa Junior College botanist Milo Baker first described Vine Hill manzanita (Arctostaphylos densiflora) as a new species in 1932, he stated that it was "probably a relict in a region where natural vegetation is fast disappearing through an intensive system of agriculture." (Four Seasons, page 2, May 1972) By that time, according to Baker, Vine Hill manzanita had been reduced from an unknown pre-contact population to about a hundred individuals along a narrow strip of Vine Hill School Road, and about six plants on nearby Vine Hi...