CORNELL UNIVERSITY EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 247 



mental plant under the name of Primus pumila. I do not know that it 

 has been suggested as a fruit plant. 



Professor Porter of Easton, Pennsylvania, one of the most critical 

 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 drift washed bare by the floods, 

 and are treeless. Here it grows, sending out on all sides strong prostrate 

 branches, often as thick as a man's arm, which form flat patches six feet 

 or more in diatiaeter. 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 fruit. The 

 other [P. cuneatci] occurs in southeastern Pennsylvania on the borders of 

 swamps and remote from river bottoms. It is strictly erect and attains 

 the height of four feet. It is so unlike the type that I have been inclined 

 to regard it as a . new species." On the dunes along lake Michigan 

 Primus pumila grows more erect than those described by Professor 

 Porter, but they always have a prostrate base over which the sand drifts. 



P. cuneafa grows at Ithaca in a dryish hill swamp, and it wholly lacks 

 the habit and appearance of the common species. 



The third dwarf cherry is the Rocky mountain plant to which I have 

 already referred, and evidently the same as the one which Professor 

 Bessey has described from the plains of Nebraska. This plant is not 

 mentioned in the Rocky mountain botanies, although there can be no 

 doubt that it is wild in Colorado and Utah. Dr. C. C. Parry collected it 

 in eastern Colorado in 1867, and apparently the same was found some- 

 where in the Rocky mountains, presumably in Colorado, in 1888, by S. M. 

 Tracy. A. S. Fuller also mentions it in the article to which I have 

 already referred. He obtained the seeds from Utah. As compared with 

 Primus pumila, he found this Utah cherry to be "more erect, none of the 

 branches trailing as in the species." Gipson speaks of the native wild 

 Colorado dwarf cherry as bearing a fruit " especially valuable for pies 

 and preserves, and is often pleasant to eat from the hand. It is wonder- 

 fully productive, and will survive all changes and vicissitudes of the 

 most exacting climate." It is interesting to find that this plant was col- 

 lected so long ago as 1839 by Geyer, in Nicollet's famous expedition, 

 being found on "arid sandy hillsides of the upper Missouri." 



The affinity of this western plant is with Primus pumila, but it differs 

 from that species, and I am inclined to regard it as a distinct botanical 

 variety, if not, indeed, a distinct species. It is a low, straggling, more or 

 less prostrate plant, the tops rising only a foot or two in the plains form, 

 the flowers small, the leaves much like those of P. pumila except that they 

 are much shorter ( 1 to 2 in. long ) and spatulate or elliptic when fully 

 grown, the fruit large upon short stems. This plant is so little known 

 'that I do not venture to give it a name. Growing in our garden, it has 

 more the aspect and light color of P. cuneafa, but its thick and pointed 

 leaves appear to distinguish it from that species. It lacks entirely the 

 wand-like and willowy character of Primus pumila; but this species is so 

 variable and so little understood that it would be unsafe to separate the 

 western plant from it upon our present evidence. We are growing this 

 western cherry, as also Pruniis pumila and P. cimeata, from various 

 sources and shall probably soon be able to determine its botanical 

 position. 



