toyon

noun

toy·​on ˈtȯi-ˌän 

plural toyons

: a chiefly Californian large ornamental evergreen shrub (Heteromeles arbutifolia) of the rose family having clusters of white flowers succeeded by persistent usually bright red berries

called also California holly, Christmas berry

Examples of toyon in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Most of the plants growing at the nursery will be planted on the structure next year: native shrubs such as white sage, California fuchsia, California buckwheat, sagebrush, purple sage, black sage, toyon and laurel sumac, along with a variety of native grasses. —Jeanette Marantos, Los Angeles Times, 29 Oct. 2024

Planting in clustered drifts with space in between each drift can be beautiful and leave space for vertical specimens, like manzanita or toyon, that break up the clusters. —Kristin Guy, Sunset Magazine, 20 Sep. 2024

The stadium’s containers are planted with native toyons. —Jeanette Marantos, Los Angeles Times, 10 Aug. 2024

Oh, and a now-large toyon and mountain mahogany on either side to provide partial shade. —Jeanette Marantos, Los Angeles Times, 30 July 2024

The sugar bush, toyon, manzanita, coffee berry, ceanothus and hummingbird sage hold their vivid green color year-round. —Lisa Boone, Los Angeles Times, 17 July 2024

Keep an eye out for Southern California’s quintessential flora along the way, such as lemonade berry and toyon. —Maura Fox, San Diego Union-Tribune, 18 Mar. 2024

The Black Mountain Open Space is a 2,352-acre park managed by the city of San Diego that is home to critters like rattlesnakes and coyotes as well as plant life like toyon, California sagebrush and prickly pear. —Maura Fox, San Diego Union-Tribune, 18 Dec. 2023

Replant Be aggressive about replanting native trees like toyon and live oaks, which can keep nonnatives away and create a wind-screen in a landscape that’s been decimated by fire. —Christine Lennon, Sunset Magazine, 14 Sep. 2023

Word History

Etymology

borrowed, probably by mediation of California Spanish tollon, from an Ohlone form cognate with Mutsun tyoty·oni "the toyon plant," Rumsen toč·on

Note: Mutsun and Rumsen are both Ohlone or Costanoan languages; Mutsun was once spoken in the Pajaro River drainage (parts of present-day northern Monterey and southern Santa Cruz Counties), and Rumsen around southern Monterey Bay and the lower Salinas and Carmel Rivers. The name toyon apparently first surfaces in print in a communication by the German botanist Karl Theodor Hartweg (1812-71) to the Horticultural Society of London, on whose behalf Hartweg made collecting trips to California and other parts of the New World (see "Journal of a Mission to California to search for Plants," Part III, "received May 10, 1847" Journal of the Horticultural Society of London, vol. 2 [1847], p. 190). It is unclear if the word was borrowed directly from Spanish. Note that the field linguist John Harrington recorded the name for the plant from his Mutsun and Rumsen informants as Spanish toyon as well as Mutsun tyottyoni and Rumsen totchon (see Barbara R. Bocek, "Ethnobotany of Costanoan Indians, California, Based on Collections of John P. Harrington," Economic Botany, vol. 38, no. 2 [April-June 1984], p. 249). On the basis of the Mutsun and Rumsen forms, Catherine Callaghan reconstructs as the ancestral Proto-Costanoan word *toty‧o-n, and for a still earlier pre-Proto-Costanoan **toy‧o-n (see Proto Utian Grammar and Dictionary, De Gruyter, 2011, p. 407). The word for the plant in San Francisco Bay Costanoan, the other major language of the family—of which only the Chochenyo dialect is fully attested—is tuyuk.

First Known Use

1847, in the meaning defined above