102 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



This cherry is in cultivation as an ornamental plant under the 

 name of Prunus pumila. I do not know that it has been sug- 

 gested as a fiTiit plant. 



Professor Porter, of Easton, Pennsylvania, one of the most criti- 

 cal observers of our eastern flora, writes as follows concerning 

 these dwarf cherries : " We have two forms of dwarf cherry very 

 diverse in habit. One [P. pumila] grows on the islands and flats 

 of the Delaware, which are composed of gravel and cobblestone 

 di'ift washed bare by the floods, and are treelesis. Here it grows, 

 sending out on all sides strong prosti'ate branches, often as thick 

 as a man's arm, which form flat patches six feet or more in diame- 

 ter. The branches are so close together that they hold the fine 

 sand and mud and create low mounds or hillocks, and in the proper 

 season the spaces between them are black with the fniit. The 

 other [P. cuneata] occurs in southeastern Pennsylvania on the 

 borders of swamps and remote from river bottoms. It is strictly 



" Umbels sessile aggregated, few flowered, calyx obtuse: branches angled 

 depressed-prostrate ; leaves cuneate-lauceolate; rarely serrate, glabrous above, 

 glaucous beneath ; fruit ovate. 



" On sandy shores of rivers and lakes: Canada to Virginia, v. v. This low- 

 shrub which spreads its bi-anches very much, and does not rise above one foot 

 from the ground, is known by the name of Sandcherries. The fi'uit is black, 

 small and agreeably tasted." 



P incana, Schweinitz in Long's Exped,'2, Append. 113. Bailey, Annals Hort. 

 18M, 234. 



Through the kindness of Mr. J. H. Redfield of the Philadelphia Academy of 

 Sciences, I have had the privilege of examining Schweinitz's specimens (coU. 

 at Lake of the Woods) and they are unmistakably P. pumila. 



In all these descriptions, the long leaves, prostrate habit and the habitat, 

 apply only to the plant under discussion. 



Prunus cuneuta, Rafinesque, Ann. Nat. 11 (1820). 



" 83. Prunus cuneata. Shrubby, branches straight, round, biangular, leaves 

 cuneate, obtuse, crenate, base entire, glaucous beneath ; umbels sessile, com- 

 monly qnadriflore, calix serrulate, rugose trans versally. — On the mountains of 

 Pennsylvania, probably i cherry shrub, it rises two feet, brandies dark purple 

 leaves and flowers small, peduncles short, three to five flowers together, white; 

 it blossorns in May." 



The absence of any allusion to long leaves and depressed habit, the obtuse 

 leaves and the mountain habitat, lead me to venture to use this name for the 

 upright dwarf cherry. The leaves of this plant, to be sure, are often acute 

 when mature, but at flowering time they are conspicuously obtuse, and 

 Rafinesque appears to have had them at that stage. 



