XXVII. 3. THE JUNE BERRY. 443 



A genus of three or four species, two of them European, and 

 one, with very numerous and marked varieties, American. 



The Shad Bush. Swamp Pyrus. A. Canadensis. Torrey 



and Gray. 



Figured in Audubon's Birds, I, Plate 60. 



There are two remarkably distinct varieties of this species 

 found in Massachusetts. Both are called the Shad Bush, from 

 flowering when the shad begin to ascend the streams. The 

 first is also called 



The June Berry. A. botryapium. This is a small, graceful 

 tree, from fifteen to twenty -five, sometimes thirty feet high, with 

 a few, slender, distant branches, usually growing in upland 

 woods. The bark is of a reddish green ; that of the branches 

 and stems, of a rich purplish brown, and very smooth. The 

 leaves are two or three inches long and rather more than half 

 that breadth, oval, varying from ovate to elliptic and obovate, 

 sharply and finely serrate, usually somewhat cordate at base, 

 and abruptly acuminate, smooth on both surfaces or scattered 

 with a few silken hairs, when just expanded, afterwards smooth, 

 purple when young, paler beneath. Petioles one fourth or one 

 fifth the length of the leaves. Stipules very slender, lanceolate, 

 invested with silky hairs, purple or faint crimson, falling off 

 with the investing scales of the buds. Outer scales roundish, 

 concave ; inner, lanceolate, silky ; all, crimson or purple, smooth 

 without, silky-villose within. Flowers large, in spreading, often 

 somewhat pendulous racemes, of from 4 to 8, on the ends of 

 the branches, expanding in April or May, just as the leaves are 

 beginning to open, with small, purple or faint crimson bracts at 

 the base of the partial flower-stalks and often near the flowers. 

 Segments of the calyx acuminate, edged and lined with silky 

 down. Petals white, linear-lanceolate, narrowed at base, three 

 times as long as the calyx. Fruit pear-shaped, purplish, very 

 sweet and pleasant, ripening in June, earlier than any other 

 fruit, and much sought for by birds. 



The union of the crimson or purple of the scales and stipules, 

 with the pure white of the flowers, and the glossy, silken, scat- 



