Plant · P-1149

Snowbrush

Ceanothus velutinus

Snowbrush is an evergreen shrub of western mountain slopes that thickens into dense stands through root sprouting and layering, its sticky balsam-scented foliage carrying fragrant white flowers from spring into summer. Root nodules fix nitrogen with a soil fungus rather than the bacteria legumes use, and every part of the plant lathers into a gentle soap when crushed with water. The seed can sit dormant in the ground for well over a century, waiting for fire or scarification to trigger germination, so a burned or cleared patch can return thick with seedlings decades after the parent plants are gone.