50 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
but no doubt in the course of time many of these 
connecting varieties will disappear, and the future 
botanist will then have little difficulty in separating 
and identifying those that are left. It is in some 
such way that our existing species of plants have 
been created, and this multiplicity of Bramble-forms 
helps us to understand the process. ’ 
If we were to imagine the Stone Bramble varying in 
the direction of putting all its juiciness into a single 
drupe (as it frequently does), and to largely increase 
the size of both drupe and carpel, making the latter 
thick and bony, we should have in effect a—cherry ! 
A cherry is a large drupe containing a single carpel 
(the cherry-stone), and suspended by a long stalk; 
a plum differs little save in its more elongated shape, 
its flatter stone and shorter stalk. The flowers of 
plums and cherries are also roses! 
We have four 
native species of 
these “stone- 
fruits;? “gadis 
these the first is 
ZZ > the Blackthorn 
=" (Prunus commu- 
nis), producing the 
a /¢ Sloe as its fruit; 
y and the sub-species 
Sia P. wnsititia, pro- 
ducing the Bullace, 
and P. domestica, whose fruit is the Wild Plum. The 
Blackthorn is a much-branched shrub, with hard tough 
wood, each of the branches ending in a sharp spine, 
caused by the withering of the growing point. In 
