ROSACEA 



527 



14. Prunus australis, Beadl. "Wild Cherry. 



Leaves obovate, oval or elliptical, gradually narrowed and obtusely short-pointed 

 or sometimes acute at the apex, rounded or sometimes cuneate at the narrowed base, 



and finely serrate, with slender teeth tipped with minute dark red glands, when they 

 unfold membranaceous, pale yellow-green and glabrous above, with the exception of 

 occasional pale hairs along the midribs, and coated below with pale or ferrugineous 

 pubescence, and at maturity thin but firm, dark dull green above, covered below 

 with matted rufous hairs most abundant on the thin broad midribs, and slender 

 primary veins extending nearly to the margins of the leaf, conspicuously reticulate- 

 venulose, 2^'~4:' long, l^'-2^' wide; their petioles stout, rusty-tomentose, biglandular 

 at the apex, with large dark red glands, about ^' long; stipules linear to linear-lan- 

 ceolate, glandular, bright rose color, \'-^' long. Flowers probably opening toward 

 the end of April, on short pedicels from the axils of minute rose -colored caducous 

 bracts, in slender spreading hoary-pubescent racemes 3-4' long; the expanded 

 flowers not known. Fruit ripening and falling late in July, on pedicels ^' long, 

 globose, surrounded at the base by the calyx-lobes and remnants of the stamens, 

 dark purple when fully ripe, about ^' in diameter. 



A tree, sometimes 60 tall, with a trunk 12'-16' in diameter, spreading or ascend- 

 ing branches forming an oblong head, and slender branchlets coated at first with 

 pale pubescence, becoming puberulous, dull red-brown, and roughened by numerous 

 small pale elevated lenticels at the end of the first season, and glabrous or puberu- 

 lous in their second year. Bark of young stems and of the branches thin, silvery 

 gray, and roughened by long horizontal lenticels, becoming on older trunks ^' thick, 

 ashy gray or brownish black, deeply fissured and broken into thick persistent plate- 

 like scales. 



Distribution. Clay soil at Evergreen, southern Alabama; common. 



4. Flowers racemose in the axils of the persistent leaves of the previous year. 

 Laurels. 



Cherry 



15. Prunus Caroliniana, Ait. Wild Orange. Mock Orange. 



Leaves oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, mucronate, with entire thickened slightly 

 revolute margins, or rarely remotely spinuloscTserrate, glabrous, coriaceous, dark 



