512 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



bright green, glabrous or puberulous at first, and dark brown tinged with red in their 

 second season, and stout spiny lateral spur-like secondary branchlets. "Winter-buds 

 acuminate, Y~'k' ^^ng, with chestnut-brown triangular scales pale and scarious on the 

 margins. Bark about 1' thick, light gray-brown, with a smooth outer layer exfoli- 

 ating in large thick plates of several papery layers, and in falling exposing the 

 darker slightly fissured scaly inner bark. Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, 

 rich bright red-brown, witii thin lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Neighborhood of streams in rich alluvial soil, or on low limestone 

 hills in open glades, or wood borders; Newfoundland, through the valley of the St. 

 Lawrence River to the valleys of the Rainy and Assiniboine rivers, the southern 

 shores of Lake Manitoba, and southeastern Minnesota. 



Often cultivated in Canadian gardens and occasionally in those of the northern 

 states as a fruit-tree or for the beauty of its flowers, and now sparingly naturalized 

 along the northern borders of the United States. Varieties are propagated by pomo- 

 logists. 



2. Prunus Americana, Marsh. "Wild Plum. 



Leaves oval or slightly obovate, acuminate, narrowed and occasionally rounded at 

 the base, and sharply and often doubly serrate, when they unfold nearly glabrous or 

 furnished below with conspicuous axillary tufts of pale hairs, and at maturity thick 



fl^.M-2.3 



and firm, more or less rugose, dark green on the upper, pale and glabrous on the 

 lower surface, 3'^' long, and 1^' wide, with slender midribs and primary veins; their 

 petioles slender, ^'-f long, usually without glands; stipules linear, often 3-lobed, 

 sharply serrate, ^' |' long, early deciduous. Flowers appearing in early spring 

 when the leaves are nearly fully grown, V in diameter, bad-smelling, on slender gla- 

 brous green pedicels ^-f long, in 2-5-flowered umbels; calyx-tube narrowly obconic, 

 light red, glabrous or puberulous, green on the inside, the lobes acuminate, entire, 

 reflexed after the flowers open, slightly pubescent on the outer, pilose on the inner 

 surface; petals rounded and irregularly laciniate at the apex, contracted below into 

 long narrow claws, bright red at the base, 1' long and \' wide. Fruit ripening in 

 June at the south and from the end of August to early October at the north, subglo- 

 bose or rarely slightly elongated, usually rather less than V in diameter, in ripening 



