INDIAISTA HORTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 283 



plums we all knew in our childhood, belong to the class that we know 

 as the European plums. That means they were brought to this country 

 from Europe by our ancestors. These are more extensively grown than 

 any others in this country. They are successfully gi-own through the 

 middle section of the country from north, to south; they are fairly success- 

 ful as far north as the Great Lakes. Then we have another class of plums 

 that have been recently introduced from Japan, the large Burbank, etc. 

 They are quite different in their properties from the European plum. We 

 don't generally consider them as delicate in quality. They are about equal 

 to the European pkims in hardiness, probably not quite so hardy. 



We have, in addition to this, the wild goose plum of this country, 

 found here, native plums, and are here to a lesser or greater extent In 

 the wild parts of the country. These plums were not until a recent date 

 considered sufficiently valuable for cultivation. There are also two dis- 

 tinct types of the native plums. The wild goose plum is of a familiar 

 type. The wild goose plum is of the same family that we notice in 

 the central and southern portions of our country. In the northern part 

 of the country, I have still another species. I wish to have you dis- 

 tinctly understand the difference between the wild goose class of plums 

 (I speak of it as a class, although there is distinguished two or three 

 different species of those) and what we call the American or northern 

 plum. It is of these species that I shall speak largely today. 



THE CULTURE OF NATIVE PLUMS. 



BY E. S. GOFF. 



[Abstract." 



In a climate as far north as this, the European and Japanese plums are 

 not reliable for fruiting. It is true that after a mild winter, the trees 

 may fruit well, but in a winter when the temperature descends much below 

 twenty degrees below zero, the flower buds of these species are usually 

 destroyed. 



In Wisconsin, we have been obliged to abandon to a great extent the 

 European and Japanese plums for market. We have, therefore, turned 

 our attention to the native plums, and I am pleased to say that we have 

 found one species of native plum that is proving very satisfactory. The 

 flower-buds are not susceptible to cold and the trees are long-lived and pro- 

 ductive. This is the species that is designated by botanists as Prunus 

 Americana, of which we now have something more than a hundred named 

 varieties. 



