58 THE PLUMS OF NEW YORK. 



silvery and somewhat scurfy twigs, smaller, thinner and lighter colored 

 leaves and smaller fruits with more roundish stones. 



Prunus americana is the predominating native plum. It is the 

 most widely distributed, is most abundant in individual specimens and has 

 yielded the largest number of horticultural varieties of any of the native 

 species. Because of its prominence and comparatively high degree of 

 permanency of characters it may well be considered the type from which 

 has sprung not only its botanical varieties but several other of the American 

 species. Its variability, too, is shown in its many diverse horticultviral 

 varieties, and of its adaptability it may be said that it flourishes on nearly 

 all soils and exposures, and is foimd wild or cultivated from Maine to 

 Florida and northward from Mexico along the eastern slope of the Rocky 

 Mountains well into Canada. The species was well named by Marshall 

 "Americana." 



This plum has not played nearly as important a part in the pomology 

 of America as its merits would warrant. It seems to have made an im- 

 pression almost from the first upon the Europeans who settled America, for 

 it is mentioned in nearly all the early records of the food products of the 

 newly found land, yet its cultivation can hardly be said to have begun 

 until the last half of the Nineteenth Century. But the early descriptions 

 of this and other native plums by the colonial explorers, naturalists and 

 botanists, show but little interest in these fruits as subjects for cultivation, 

 and seem to contain almost no prophecies as to the possible development 

 of a new orchard plant from them. It is probable that the Damsons, 

 which were early introduced in America, and the Domesticas, which came 

 at least before the Revolution, proved so adaptable to the part of the New 

 World in which the colonies were planted that this, even though the best 

 of the wild plums, offered small reward in comparison. 



It is certain, however, that from the very first, Americana plums 

 were much used by the early settlers as wild fruits, for the histories of all 

 the colonies and states in which plums are found contain innumerable 

 references to wild plums, usually with some expression showing that they 

 were considered makeshifts tmtil the European plums could be grown. 

 Long before white men came to America the possessors of the continent 

 knew and esteemed these fruits of the woods. According to some of the 

 early writers wild plums of this species, since found where the Americanas 

 are dominant, were planted and rudely cultivated by the natives.' It 



' The New York Agricultural Experiment Station stands on the site of the old Indian village 

 of Kanadasaga, founded by the Seneca Indians. The records of Sullivan's raid just after the 

 Revolution show that when this village was destroyed by the Whites there were orchards of apples 

 and plums (see Conover's Kanadasaga and Geneva (Mss.) Hobart College) crudely cultivated. On 



