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The following native plants were cultivated for their fruit. 
The Common Sunflower (#7. annuus L.) is an American plant 
which, under several forms, extends from the ‘arctic circle to the 
tropics and from the Missouri river to the Pacific. It was com- 
monly cultivated by the Indians, from Canada to Mexico, west 
and east of the Mississippi, being for many of them a staple article 
of food. The seeds were parched, ground and made-into a pala- 
table and nutritious bread said by Palmer and Douglas to be 
hardly inferior to corn bread. By expression they yield about 20 
per cent. of an excellent table oil which the Indians, more mindful 
of their appearance than of their diet, mostly used for anointing 
their hair and skin. The culture of this plant in Canada was 
noticed by Champlain and, a few years after, by Sagard; in that 
region the seeds must have been obtained from beyond the Missis- 
sippi and a little south, through the agency of intervening tribes. 
As in the case of H. svéerosus it is interesting to note that this 
native plant is much more extensively cultivated in the Old World 
than in the New. 
Prunus Americana Marsh, and P. nigra Ait., our two species 
of Wild Yellow or Red Plum, were, according to several authori- 
ties, planted by the New England and Canadian natives, and from 
the many forms discovered farther west it is not improbable that 
this culture extended to the Mississippi. Some forty-five horticul- 
tural kinds derived from them are described by Prof. Bailey, and it 
is not assuming too much to suppose that several of them are due 
to variations initiated by Indian industry. It is probable enough, 
however, that the native orchard was seldom regularly planted, 
but oftener the accidental result of seeds dropped in the vicinity 
of camping grounds and villages. 
Prunus angustifolia Marsh, the Chickasaw Plum of the South, 
is regarded by Prof. Sargent as native of the eastern slopes of the 
southern Rocky Mountains and of the plateaus extending thence 
to the Mississippi, and as having been introduced by the Indians 
into the southern Atlantic States where it soon became exten- 
sively naturalized. Clumps of it were found about all Indian vil- 
lages, and the variations thus started have doubtless developed 
into some of our seventeen horticultural forms. 
Of the cultivation of Prunus hortulana Bailey, the common 
