TREE FRUITS AND FLOWERS 



621 



the small bush of the wild crab, covered 

 thick with the pink-white blossoms so 

 like our own orchard blooms as to cause 

 one to wonder if a stray apple seed has 

 not fallen there. Its close cousin, the 

 wild plum, has very much the 

 same fragrant pinkish blossom, 

 but it is to be looked for in a 

 different location, preferably 

 sandy soil, either dry or moist, 

 it does not seem to matter to 

 the wild plum; I have found 

 it in the sand dune barrens 

 of Bamegat and bordering 

 salt marsh swamps along the 

 seacoast with equal impartial- 

 ity. Its fruit is a small red 

 plum, rather resiny in taste, 

 and apt to make one sick if 

 indulged in too freely. The 

 Indians dried these plums in 

 quantities for winter fruit 

 supply. What with the tree 

 fruits — berries and nuts — to 

 say nothing of edible plants 

 such as the wild bean and the 

 Indian potato, the Woodland 

 Indians never lacked for plenty 

 to substantiate their meat fare. 

 Among the nuts, both the 

 hickories and the walnuts are 

 out in May. In all the hick- 

 ory species look for long 

 trailing catkins, yellowish- 

 green in all species but the 

 mockemut which has reddish 

 stamens. These constitute the 

 sterile flowers, while the fertile 

 ones are small embryo nut 

 shells with no corolla or prim- 

 itive petal at all. The walnuts 

 make a better showing, with 

 their sterile flowers long green 

 strings of little knotty flowrets 

 having purple anthers, while 

 the fertile flower is a green, 

 tubular forerunner of the nut, 

 with two long, deep-pink lobes 

 of corolla protruding. These 

 are really the stigmas, or that 

 part of the pistil which receives the 

 pollen from the sterile flowers. The 

 white walnut, or butternut, has even a 

 prettier display, with deep rose stigmas 

 on the fertile flowers and long, brown, 

 drooping catkins for the sterile flowers. 



A most handsome tree flower, coming 

 out in late May, is the catalpa or Indian 

 bean. Native to the central West, 

 straggling specimens, either accidental 

 plantings or stragglers from the van- 



Photo by American Museum of Natural History. 



The Wild Crab. 



look in some moist dell. tinkling with the fall of a tiny 

 brook, for the fragr.\nt blossoms of the wild crab. 



guard, are encountered here and there 

 in the eastern woods. The flowers are 

 abundant all over the tree, in big showy 

 clusters, compound pyramids of forty 

 or flfty bell-shaped white flowers with 

 yellowish centers plentifulh' sprinkled 



