ROSACEJE 523 



slightly pitted walls, ridged and prominently grooved on the ventral and rounded 

 and slightly grooved on the dorsal suture. 



A tree, with exceedingly bitter bark and leaves, occasionally 30-40 high, with a 

 trunk 12'-14:' in diameter, slender rather upright branches forming a symmetrical 

 oblong head, and slender flexible branchlets coated at first with pale pubescence, 

 dark red-brown during their first winter, bright red, conspicuously marked by large 

 pale lenticels in their second season, and furnished with short lateral branchlets; 

 frequently a shrub, with spreading stems 3-10 tall. Winter-buds acute, i' long, 

 with chestnut-brown scales often slightly scarious on the margins, those of the inner 

 ranks becoming acuminate, glandular-serrate above the middle, scarious, and ^' long, 

 with bright red tips. Bark about \' thick, with a generally smooth dark brown sur- 

 face marked by horizontal light gray interrupted bands and by rows of oblong 

 orange-colored lenticels. Wood close-grained, soft and brittle, brown streaked with 

 green, with paler sapwood of 8-10 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Usually near the banks of streams in low rich soil, or less com- 

 monly on dry hillsides; valley of the upper Jocko River, Montana, on the mountain 

 ranges of Idaho and Washington and of southern British Columbia to Vancouver 

 Island, and southward on the coast ranges to the neighborhood of the bay of San 

 Francisco, on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada up to elevations of 5000- 

 6000 above the sea to the head of Kern Kiver, on the Santa Lucia, San Rafael, and 

 San Bernardino Mountains, California, and to the Washoe Mountains, Nevada, and 

 the San Francisco peaks, Arizona; of its largest size on Vancouver Island, in west- 

 ern Oregon and Washington, and on the Santa Lucia Mountains; on the coast ranges 

 of middle California and on the Sierra Nevada commonly a shrub o-8 high. 



3. Flowers in terminal racemes on leafy branches of the year. Wild Cherries. 



11. Prunus demissa, Walp. Choke Cherry. 



(Prunus Virginiajia, Silva N. Am. iv. 41, in part. ^ 



Leaves broadly oval to oblong-obovate, acute, acuminate, or abruptly short- 

 pointed at the apex, subcordate, rounded, or rarely wedge-shaped at the base, and 

 finely serrate, with slender callous teeth, when they unfold glabrous or pubescent 

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

 and firm to subcoriaceous, dark green, lustrous and glabrous above, pale or glaucous 

 and glabrous or rarely puberulous below, 2'-4' long, l'-2' wide, with stout yellow 

 midribs, and thin remote primary veins united at some distance from the margins, 

 turning yellow in the autumn before falling; their petioles slender, glabrous or 

 rarely villose, glandular near the apex, with 2 or several glands \'-^' long. Flowers 

 opening from April at the south to the middle of June at the north, \'-\' in diam- 

 eter, on slender glabrous or puberulous pedicels in the axils of scarious caducous 

 bracts, in slender many-flowered erect or nodding racemes 3'-6' long; calyx-tube 

 cup-shaped, glabrous or rarely puberulous, the lobes short, broad, obtuse, laciniate 

 or more or less glandular on the margins, deciduous from the fruit; petals orbicular, 

 contracted below into short claws, pure white. Fruit Y-\' in diameter, globose or 

 occasionally somewhat elongated, nearly black, with a thick lustrous skin, dark juicy 

 slightly astringent flesh of agreeable flavor, and an oblong-ovate stone, about \' long, 

 acute at the apex, broadly ridged on the ventral and slightly grooved on the dorsal 

 suture. 



