California these shrubs are common on the mountain slopes and on the foothills of the great ranges, where they are constituents of the chaparral. They are locally known as mountain lilacs.

CELERY (Apium graveolens). — Flowers white, in umbels. Along the Sacramento River, California, it yields a surplus. Some of the finest garden country in the world is found for many miles along the Sacramento River, California. Truck farming is here an important industry, and celery and parsnips are grown by the acre for seed. Both of these plants yield nectar freely, little drops of which can be readily seen gleaming in the flowers. Large quantities of celery honey are stored, which has at first the well-known flavor of this vegetable.

CENTURY PLANT. — See Agave.

CHAPMAN’S HONEY PLANT. — See Globe Thistle.

CHAMISE (Adenostoma fasciculatum).—Also called greasewood. An evergreen spreading bush not more than 10 feet tall, very abundant on the Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada, where it grows above the foothills, excluding all other vegetation. The small white flowers are produced in dense terminal clusters, and are very attractive to bees. Blooms in June.

CHERRY (Prunus).—Cultivated cherries are popularly divided into two groups — the sweet cherries (P. avium) and the sour cherries (P. Cerasus). In Oregon, where the cherry ranks fourth in importance among the cultivated fruits, and there are orchards of 10 to 100 acres, the cultivated cherry is an important honey plant. Of wild cherries, the choke cherry (P. virginiana) extends from New England to Texas and Colorado, and the white bloom is eagerly sought by bees. It is common in thickets. In Florida it grows on both high pine lands and the hammocks, and seldom fails to yield bountifully. A surplus of this honey is more hurtful than beneficial, as it is dark red and as bitter as wormwood, having nearly the same flavor as the cherry-pit. A very little of it will spoil the flavor and color of the first orange honey. Up to the beginning of the flow from orange, it is largely consumed in feeding the brood.

CHERRY LAUREL (Laurocerasus caroliniana). — A beautiful lustrous-leaved evergreen tree, 25 to 40 feet tall, growing in the river valleys of Florida and widely cultivated for ornament. The greenish-white flowers are in short rather dense racemes, and in the region of the orange trees bloom in February and early March. It is an excellent source of nectar for stimulating early brood-rearing and building up the colonies of bees for the orange flow. If the weather is fair during the blooming-time, the flowers are alive with bees, and their humming can be heard for a long distance. The tree is known locally as “wild olive.”

CHICORY (Cichorium Intybus). — The showy heads of bright blue flowers open early in the morning. Common in fields and by the roadsides. A great favorite of bees. July to October. In Phillips Island, off the Victorian Coast of Australia, it is grown as a commercial crop, and yields nectar well in showery weather. Chicory has been extensively cultivated in Germany for the roots, which are used as a substitute for coffee. (Fig. 40.)

CHINA-TREE. — See Soapberry.

CHINQUAPIN (Castanea nana). — The honey is thick and dark, resembling dark molasses in color, and strong and very bitter in flavor. It is ranked by E. R. Root as the poorest of honeys, and he compares its taste to that of a mixture of cayenne pepper and quinine. It grows at its best in Georgia. Through the great sand-ridge section of Florida this shrub grows luxuriantly to a height of 12 to 16 feet. This section is usually burned over in winter, and all sprouts killed; but each spring new shoots spring up from the roots, often in clusters of 50 or more. The leaves are dark green upon the upper side, but dingy white underneath. The staminate catkins, in which the nectar is said to be plainly visible, are long,