Definition of "toyon" [toyon]

• An evergreen Californian shrub (Heteromeles arbutifolia), having leathery leaves, small white flowers in large panicles, and red, fleshy, berrylike fruit. Also called Christmas berry. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Mexicans were born here, among the smoky bouquets of the toyon shrub, made love on hills of elderberry, honeysuckle, and fistfuls of lilac fiesta flowers, married each other by a ring of deodar cedars, grew old walking the long, open fields of sage scrub and giant wild rye, and died in ancient forests of pine and eucalyptus."
• "A ginko, and a California buckeye, to begin with, and in the back a bigleaf maple, a fig, and a toyon."
• "I had seen nothing on his face or clothes under that toyon tree to suggest a fight, or past fights."