8 Bulletin 62. 



plum, have been introduced in Japan, but are not generally known, 

 if known at all, beyond the environments of foreign settlements, 

 and those regions reached by the Kaitakushi in its attempts to 

 introduce and naturalize foreign fruits. The Kaitakushi was the 

 name of a department of the government (commonly translated 

 Colonization Department), which, however, was abolished long 

 ago. Its object was to colonize the northern island with Japanese, 

 and to this end large numbers of fruits and other economic plants 

 from the West were introduced, the climate there being some- 

 what like that of central and northern Europe. ' ' If the Domes- 

 tica plums are little known in Japan, it may also be said that the 

 Japanese plums appear to be wholly unknown in Europe,* unless 

 possibly in Russia ; and it is therefore not probable that any 

 serious confusion of varieties has occurred between the two 

 species. It is very important, then, that a complete record of 

 this species should be made while yet it is confined to compara- 

 tively isolated areas of the globe. 



Botanical position of the Japanese plums. — There is a striking 

 difference in the winter characters of trees of Japanese and 

 Domestica plums. The Japanese varieties tend to make long and 

 forking branches, with a light colored, rough, somewhat peach- 

 like bark which is marked by numerous corky elevations, while 

 the Domesticas are closer and more bushy growers, with a dull 

 gray or purplish, tight, smooth bark. But the greatest diflfer- 

 euces lie in the buds. The engraving ( page 5 ) shows at No. i a 

 twig of the Coe's Golden Drop, a Domestica plum ; this,in common 

 with all varieties of the species, has single and pointed buds. 

 The Japanese varieties usually have their buds in threes, as in 

 the twig of Burbank (No. 2), or sometimes even in fours or fives, 

 as in the shoot of Kerr (No. 3), and these buds are small and 

 blunt. Three flowers commonly spring from each flower-bud of 

 the Japanese varieties and it was this circumstance which led 

 Roxburgh to call the species Primus triflora or three-flowered 

 plum ; while in the Domestica type the flowers are more common- 



*Naudin, for instance, in his admirable Manuel de V Acclimateur (1887) 

 knows the species (which he calls, erroneously, Prunus Japonica) only from 

 an account of the recent introductions into California contained in the 

 Gardener s Chronicle. 



