"I have growing, which I destine for you, a very handsome little shrub of the size of a currant bush. Its beauty consists of a great production of berries the size of currants, and literally as white as snow, which remain on the bush through the winter, after the leaves have fallen and make it an object as singular as it is beautiful."
—Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Madame La Contesse de Tesse, December 8th, 1813, as cited by Leslie L. Haskins,
Wild Flowers of the Pacific Coast, 1954