The Japanese Pi,ums. 



position of these oriental plums ; but as the varieties increased 

 and began to attract general attention, a demand arose for a 

 knowledge of their genesis. A iplum found in the botanic gar- 

 dens at Calcutta 

 about seventy- 

 years ago by- 

 Roxburgh, and 

 by him named 

 Prunustriflora, 

 seemed the 

 most likely par- 

 ent ; but as 

 there were 

 some difficul- 

 ties in his char- 

 acterization of 

 the species, and 

 as subsequent 

 botanists have 

 not found the 

 wild form, and 

 as Maximo- 

 wicz, the most 

 eminent botan- 

 ist who has 

 recently given 

 careful atten- 

 t i o n to these 

 oriental floras, 

 does not idenify 

 the cultivated 

 plum flora of 

 Japan with Roxburgh's species, I accepted for a time a name pro- 

 posed by Professor Kizo Tamari, of Tokio, Primus Hatta)i, and 

 published it as the best means of classifying our knowledge of these 

 plums until the proper botanical name should be determined. In 

 1891, Professor Georgeson, of the Kansas Agricultural College, 

 who had spent some years in Japan in a critical study of its pro- 



Winter buds of tlirce species of Plums — Prunus doiiies- 

 tica, P. trifiora, and P. hortulana. 



