314 Missouri State Horticultural Society. 



AN ENTIRELY NEW PLAN. 



A number of shrubs and small trees that came from a Euro- 

 pean correspondent a few years ago, were planted in a nursery row 

 prejDaratory to making a final disjDOsitiou of them. This year one 

 of these attracted attention by a shoAV of fruit. It proved to be 

 Prunus Simoni, Simon's Plum, a native of the northern j)art of 

 China. Tlie tree, now about ten feet high, has slender, erect 

 branches. The lance-sliaped leaves are minutely serrate on the 

 margin, and with two or four small globose glands at the base. 

 The leaves are a dark green and shining on the upper surface, and 

 lighter colored and dull below. The fruit, ripe about August 10th, 

 soinetimes reaches two inches in diameter, though usually smaller, 

 and has a very short stem. It is much flattened lengthwise, and 

 at a short distance appears like a diminutive apple. It has a dis- 

 tinct, but not a very deep suture. The skin, which is perfectly 

 smooth, is of a dark-red color, known as cinnabar. The flesh is of 

 an apricot-yellow color, and somewhat adherent to the stone. The 

 stone has a nearly orbicular outline, thicker on one side than on 

 the other, and marked with furrows and holes in a similar man- 

 ner to the peach, though, in a less degree. The fruit has an 

 agreeable and peculiar odor, recalling tbat of an apricot. The 

 flesh, while not very juicy, is, when fully ripe, agreeable, with a 

 marked and pleasant flavor, in which the taste of bitter almond is 

 quite perceptible. 



It is the possibilities that this new plum i^resents, rather than 

 what it now is, that interests us. AVhen we see what has been done 

 in improving the Sand pear by hybridizing, we hope some one may 

 experiment with the Simon's plum, and make it the foundation of 

 a new class of plums, and perhaps of peaches. Pomologists will 

 observe in this fruit a remarkable union of the characters that 

 distinguish the plum and the peach. Its smooth skin, and the 

 character of the flesh are those of a plum, while the glands at the 

 base of the leaves, and the grooved and rough stone are like the 

 peach. Indeed, Decaisne originally named it Persica Simoni* 

 Simon's Peach. This species shows that Bentham and Hooker 

 were right in uniting the almond, peach, plum, cherry, apricot, 

 etc., all under the single genus Prunus. — American Agriculturist. 



THE PEACH. 



Amygdalus Persica — is, according to the common opinion, of 

 Persian origin. Diodorus Siculus says that it was carried from 

 Persia into Egypt during the time that Cambuyses ruled over that 



