522 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



close-grained, light brown, with thin yellow sapwood. The fruit is often used domes- 

 tically and in the preparation of cough mixtures. 



Distribution. Newfoundland to the shores of Hudson's Bay, and westward in 

 British America to the eastern slopes of the coast range of British Columbia in the 

 valley of the Frazer River, and southward through the northern states to Pennsyl- 

 vania, central Michigan, northern Illinois, central Iowa, and to the high mountains 

 of North Carolina and Tennessee, and on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains 

 of Colorado; common in all the forest regions of the extreme northern states, grow- 

 ing in moist rather rich soil ; often occupying to the exclusion of other trees large 

 areas cleared by fire of the original forest-covering; common and attaining its largest 

 size on the western slopes of the Big Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. 



10. Prunus emarginata, Walp. Wild Cherry. 



Leaves oblong^-obovate to oblanceolate, rounded and usuallv obtuse or sometimes 

 acute at the apex, cuneate and furnished at the base with 1 or 2 and sometimes 

 3 or 4 large dark glands, and serrate, with minute subulate glandular teeth, when 

 they unfold puberulous or pubescent on the lower surface and slightly viscid, and at 

 maturity glabrous or pubescent below (var. villosa, Sudw.), V-3' long, ^-1^' wide, 

 dark green above and paler below; their petioles short, stout, usually pubescent; 

 stipules lanceolate, acuminate, glandular-serrate, deciduous. Flo"wers appearing 

 when the leaves are about half grown, at the end of April at the level of the ocean 

 or as late as the end of June at high elevations, |'-^ in diameter, on slender pedicels 

 from the axils of foliaceous glabrous glandular-serrate bracts, in 6-12-flowered 



glabrous or pubescent corymbs I'-l^' long; calyx-tube obconic, glabrous or puberu- 

 lous, bright orange-colored in the throat, the lobes short, rounded, emarginate, or 

 slightly cleft at the apex, sometimes slightly glandular on the margins, reflexed 

 after the flowers open ; petals obovate, rounded or emarginate at the apex, contracted 

 below into short claws, white faintly tinged with green. Fruit ripening from June 

 to August, on slender pedicels, in long-stalked corymbs often 2' long, globose, Y~ 

 in diameter, more or less translucent, with a thick skin bright red at first when fully 

 grown, becoming darker and almost black, thin bitter astringent flesh, and an ovoid 

 turgid stone abdut ^' long, pointed and compressed at the ends, with thick brittle 



