The Cultivated Native Plums and Cheeeies. 67 



the myrobalan plum, but does not know the origin of the name. 

 For nearly 200 years after Clusius wrote, the fruit is described 

 by various authors in different parts of Europe, under the names 

 of myrobalan or cherry plum, during which time doubts were cast 

 upon its European origin. Thus Toumefort, in 1700, said that it 

 came from North America. In 1789, Ehrhart* described it as a 

 distinct species under the name Prunus cerasifera or " cherry- 

 bearing plum," and said distinctly that it is a native of North 

 America. Some thirty years before this time, Linnaeus had 

 described it as Prunus domestica var. myrobalan, and gave it a 

 European origin. In 1812, Loiseleur Deslonchamps § described 

 it as Prunus myrobalana, saying that it was supposed to be of 

 American origin. From that time until now the nativity of the 

 myrobalan plum has been uncertain, but European writers have 

 usually avoided the difficulty by referring it to America; and 

 American botanists have for the most part ignored it because it 

 is a cultivated plant. So it happens that this pretty fruit has 

 fallen between two countries and is homeless. Sereno Watson, 

 in his index to North American botany, published in 1878, refers 

 Ehrhart's Prunus cerasifera to the common peach plum (Prunus 

 maritima) of the Atlantic coast. But the myrobalan is wholly 

 different in every character from the beach plum, and it has been 

 long cultivated upon walls in Europe, a treatment which no one 

 would be likely to give to the little beach plum, Torrey and Gray 

 in 1838, in the Flora of North America, do not ment'um the myro- 

 balan plum. After all the exploration of the North American 

 flora, no plant has been found which could have been the original 

 of this plum; while its early cultivation in Europe, together with 

 the testimony of Clusius and other early herbalists, is strong 

 presumption that it is native to the Old World. This presump- 

 tion is increased by the doubt which exists in the minds of the 

 leading botanists, from Linnaeus down, as to its systematic 

 position, for if there is difficulty in separating it from Prunus 

 domestica, the original of the common plum and which is itself 



* Beitragre zur Naturkunde, iv. 17. 



§ Nouveau Duhamel Trait6 des Arbres et Arbust«B, v. 184, t. 57, fig. 1. 



