9° 



THE PLUMS OF NEW YORK. 



representative. Type specimens, deposited in the Economic Collection of 

 the United States Department of Agriculture, were collected by W. F. 

 Wight (flowers) at the New York State Experiment Station, Geneva, 

 New York, No. 2721, May 15, 1909, and (foliage) at the Iowa Experi- 

 ment Station, Ames, Iowa, No. 4178, September 15, 1909. 



This species dififers from Prunus angustijoUa, with which it has long 

 been confused, chiefly in being a much larger plant, a true tree while the 

 other seldom reaches the size of a tree. It has coarser and less twiggy 

 branches, shaggier bark and less red in the color of the yoving wood. The 

 leaves are larger, thicker, more truly lanceolate in shape, less folded, 

 a lighter green and less glossy. The flowers of the new species are 

 larger, fewer in number, borne in less dense ximbels which are not so nearly 

 sessile as those of the older species and are borne on longer pedicels. The 

 calyx -lobes are erect in this species and refiexed in Prunus angustijoUa, 

 strongly marked by marginal glands in Prunus munsoniana and eglandular 

 in Prunus angustijoUa. The fruits are larger and wholly plum-like in the 

 newly made species and cherry -like in Prunus angustijoUa. The stone is 

 very plum-like in Prunus munsoniana but in the older species it might 

 easily be mistaken for the pit of a cherry. The robust form is hardy as 

 far north as Geneva, New York, at least, while the other species cannot 

 be grown much north of Mason and Dixon's Hne. 



Of the varieties which certainly belong to this species by far the 

 greatest number have originated under cultivation. There is herbarium 

 material from uncultivated plants to show that this species is rather com- 

 mon in the northern part of Texas, in eastern Oklahoma and in parts of 

 Missouri. It is a species forming dense thickets in its native habitat, where 

 it is usually fotmd in rather rich soils, with the older central specimens 

 sometimes attaining a height of twenty to twenty-five feet and gradually 

 diminishing in height to the edge of the thicket. When budded and 

 grown in the orchard it forms a well-defined trunk and attains a height 

 of twenty-five feet or more. The branches are little or not at all spinescent, 

 bark of the stem in young specimens reddish or chestnut -brown, and 

 usually rather smooth, becoming scaly and losing its reddish color with 

 age, that of the young twigs usually chestnut -bro-mi. Its natural range, 

 though not yet definitely determined, probably extends from central 

 Tennessee through northern Mississippi, northern Arkansas, central 

 Missouri and southeastern Kansas to the valley of the Little Wichita River 

 in northern Texas. 



