THE DRUPE-FRUITS 149 



New York. The product of Wayland, Kanawha, and Golden 

 Beauty, best known of the plums belonging to this species, is 

 especially suitable for preserves, spicing, and jelly. The fruits 

 are too acid and the flesh clings too tenaciously to the stone 

 for dessert plums or even for ordinary culinary purposes. These 

 plums ship and keep well, and, since they are the latest of the 

 native sorts in ripening, extend the season for this fruit very 

 materially. The Hortulana plums hybridize freeL with other 

 native species, and their hybrids are such as to commend this 

 species very highly to plum-breeders. 



215. The Miner plums. — Prunus hortulana Mineri, Bailey, 

 (Plate IX), is a sub-species which differs from the species in 

 having shorter stiffer branches ; leaves smaller, thicker, rougher ; 

 the blossoms of the sub-species open a few days earlier; the 

 fruits are larger, lighter red, have more bloom, ripen earlier, 

 yet later than those of any other species, and are quite different 

 in flavor, having more nearly the taste of the fruit of P. ameri- 

 cana; the stones are very different, being in the sub-species 

 larger, broader, flatter, smoother, scarcely clinging so much, 

 and less pointed. 



The chief representatives of the Miner-like plums under cul- 

 tivation are Miner, Forest Rose, Prairie Flower, and Clinton. 

 In the orchard, the Miner plums behave much like the Ameri- 

 canas. In some respects the fruits are an improvement on 

 those of the Americana varieties. The skin is usually less tough 

 and brighter in color; and the flavor is better. These plums 

 seem to be nearly or quite as hardy as the Americanas, and 

 are adapted to as wide a range of soils. The trees of the Miner 

 plums are more amenable to domestication than those of P. 

 americana, having straighter trunks, less unkempt tops, and 

 making larger trees. The fruits ripen so late as to make the 

 varieties of this group especially valuable in prolonging the 

 season for plums in regions in which native varieties are grown 

 exclusively. 



Nigra plums. 



Nigras are the most northern native plums. They are im- 

 portant pomologically because they can be grown in colder re- 

 gions than any other plums of this continent. 



