270 TRANSACTIONS OF THE HORTICULTUEAL 



plums were growing together, not one tree of the whole 1,200 ever 

 matured a plum, except the trees next the cherry trees, around the 

 whole margin for eighty rods or more, matured a few fruits on the 

 side of the plum trees, next the cherry trees, each year for many 

 years. In these facts we have very good proofs that the pollen of 

 the cherry can, to some extent, fertilize the ovaries of the plums. 

 If I had been as crazy about the Almond family then as I am at the 

 present time, those plums around the margin of that cherry orchard 

 would have been very carefully examined, and the seeds planted; 

 yet, very likely, I should have produced nothing from them but 

 plums, as I will try to show further on. 



Let us see if it is not probable we now have a cross between the 

 cherry {Cerasus) and the plum (Primus). My first glance at the 

 Mariana plum caused me to think that it might be such a cross. 

 When I learned the habits of the tree, and had seen it in fruit and 

 foliage, I felt confident that, instead of having European sloe 

 " blood " in its make-up, it had Kentish Cherry blood. 1 wrote Mr. 

 Ely, the introducer, asking him if, in the orchard where the Mariana 

 sprung up as a seedling, there were any European plums or cherries 

 in fruit about the time the seed was produced. He answers that he 

 "could recollect of no foreign plums in fruit, but there must have 

 been a good many cherries." A careful examination, by any expert, 

 of the tree and fruit of this plum, will show him that it has several 

 points peculiar to the cherry, and found, I think, in no other plum. 



In the Blackman plum we have a complete mingling of the 

 wood and foliage of the peach and Chickasaw plum. Some had, 

 therefore, called it a hybrid between those two quite distinct species. 

 In fact, it undoubtedly is. But our doctors in botany disputed this 

 "flat-footed;" put themselves on record, saying such a thing was not 

 only improbable, but impossible. 



T. V. Munson, of Texas, a pretty good authority, bobs up and 

 says it is not impossible; further, that he has now growing several 

 such hybrids, produced in such a manner that there could be no mis- 

 takes. 



Have we no other such hybrids in cultivation? I think we 

 have — dozens of them; some of them of great value. 



The peach went on, generation after generation, for hundreds 

 of years, in its own staid way. In tree, fruit and foliage, it followed 

 closely in its own peculiar lines. For generations it had given us no 

 variety earlier than a certain date. All at once it gave us a variety 

 twenty days earlier than any before known — the Hale's Early. In 

 a few years more it made another long jump, and gave us varieties 

 twenty days earlier than the Hale. Alexander, Amsden's June, etc., 

 were produced. What had happened to the staid old peach? It had 

 simply got mixed up in a love affair with the sturdy, very early, 

 Chickasaw plum. 



