VOL. XVIII, PP 55-60 FEBRUARY 21, 1905 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



SOME WEST AMERICAN RED CHERRIES. 

 BY EDWARD L. GREENE. 



According to standard treatises upon North American general 

 systematic botany, the later as well as the earlier, we have in 

 the United States and Canada only two, or possibly three species 

 of genuine cherry; that is red-fruited kinds, bearing their flow 

 ers in subumbellate or corymbose short clusters, as distinguished 

 from the choke cherries genus Pad-us the fruits of which are 

 almost or quite black, and are borne in long cylindric racemes. 

 Our true cherries are supposed to be Cerasus Pennsylvanica of 

 the Atlantic slope of the continent, and C. emarginata of the 

 vaster and far more varied regions lying between the Rocky 

 Mountains and the Pacific Ocean ; two species, one for the At 

 lantic and one for the Pacific slope. 



That C. Pennsylvanica, one and indivisible as a species should 

 range from Newfoundland to Florida, and from New England 

 to Colorado, is a proposition not easily accepted. But that C. % 

 emarginata or any other species of tree or shrub so highly organ 

 ized, should occur all the way from the humid woodlands near 

 the sea at Puget Sound, down to the heated and dry hills of 

 the interior of California or the still more desert regions of south 

 eastern California, Arizona, Utah and the Mexican border this 

 is beyond the belief of any botanist familiar with those extreme 

 diversities of soil, altitude, humidity and heat that mark dif 

 ferent sections of the Pacific slope of the continent, and the 

 Great Basin. 



8 PROC. BIOL. Soc. WASH., VOL. XVIII, 1905. (55) 



