Official State Crap Update: California’s Official Shrub

Given that a big reason for having official state crap in the first place is to call attention to what the state’s adopted as “official,” it’s a little surprising to me that all U.S. state (and territorial) legislatures don’t already have me on a mailing list announcing new developments. My understanding is that of the 55 such bodies, the number that keep me informed of such things is currently zero, which is a rate of approximately zero percent. This makes no sense to me. But it does explain why I’m just now informing you that since January 1 of this year, the bigberry manzanita (Arctostaphylos glauca) has been California’s official state shrub. California’s state shrub (Joey Malone’s friend for scale)Image: Joey Malone via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 Now, you may be saying, “that’s a tree, not a shrub,” but that just shows you haven’t spent nearly four minutes researching the difference between a tree and a shrub like I just did. It doesn’t take long to learn, though, that there may not…