Nature on Trail: Madronas

By Andrew Engelson

If you’re hiking on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound, or perhaps on a sunny, rocky outcrop in the eastern Olympics, you may see a tropical-looking tree that seems out of place in the Pacific Northwest. Its broad, waxy green leaves remain on the tree throughout the winter, and its papery bark sheds to reveal smooth, supple trunks.

The tree is the madrona, the only broadleaved evergreen tree found in the Pacific Northwest. It also probably holds the distinction as the tree with the most regional variations in name. In British Columbia, it’s known as arbutus. In California, where it’s found as far south as San Diego, it’s called madrone. It’s also known as madroño, the name early Spanish explorers gave the tree, noting its resemblance to the “strawberry tree,” Arbutus unedo, a native of the Mediterranean.

Madorona trees at Deception Pass State Park. Photo by Bob and Barb.

I’ve always preferred the name madrona, and this name pops up in locations throughout the Puget Sound area. There’s a Madrona neighborhood in Seattle. And Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood—a high bluff where the trees thrive—was misnamed by a surveyor in 1856, who mistakenly thought the madrona trees he saw were magnolias.

Arbutus menziesii likes sunlight and well-drained soil—so it’s most commonly found on high, breezy bluffs. The dry, rocky slopes of the San Juan Islands are ideal, and you’ll find the elegant, buff-colored trunks of madrona arching out over salt water at places like Oyster Dome south of Bellingham and at Deception Pass State Park on Whidbey Island. You'll occasionally find it on drier hillsides in the Olympics and Cascades.

The most distinctive feature of the madrona is its papery bark, which ranges in color from green to rusty red. The bark sheds throughout the summer, and leaves behind the remarkably smooth surface of the wood, which ranges from yellow to deep tan. According to Pojar and MacKinnon’s Plants of the Northwest Coast, native tribes used the bark for a variety of medicines.

The trees can grow from 50 to 80 feet high and up to 2 feet in diameter. Madronas can live 200 years or more, and it’s said the largest specimen is a 126-foot tall tree 10 feet wide, found in California.

The sweet-smelling blossoms attract honey bees, and in autumn, madronas sport reddish orange berries, which are said to be mildly narcotic (I’ve never tried them, content to enjoy the calming effects of the trees’ beautiful appearance).

Of all the trees in the Northwest, the madrona is my favorite. Its smooth trunks are unlike any other plant in the region. And it’s often found in beautiful locations: high on an open bluff overlooking the gray expanse of Puget Sound. Nothing, to me, quite matches the sight of late afternoon light on the smooth, strangely human branches of the madrona against a backdrop of a dark Northwest sky.

The Latin name honors Scottish botanist Archibald Menzies, who was the ship’s surgeon and naturalist aboard the H.MS. Discovery, which sailed under Captain George Vancouver to the Pacific Northwest in 1792. Menzies collected and identified many plants native to the Northwest, and is perhaps best known as the namesake of Pseudotsuga menziesii, commonly known as Douglas fir.

This spring, hike up a coastal bluff and appreciate this gorgeous tree.