STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 121 



manufacturing and all the purposes of timber. It is said by Prof. 

 Bessey, as I have been informed, that its adaptation to arid regions 

 comes, like that of a large class of other plants and trees of like 

 adaptation, from its peculiar cell structure, which has a cap on its 

 upper surface, closing in dry periods when necessary and resisting 

 loss of moisture by evaporation. The box elder, or ash-leaved 

 maple, is also thought by many to be adapted to regions too 

 dry for the cottonwood. What has misled our people about the 

 adaptation of the cottonwood is that it grows almost anywhere 

 while it is young. 



NATIVE PLUMS. 



By 0. M. LoED, OF Minnesota City. 



No wild fruit is more widely or abundantly distributed in this 

 country than the plum. Along the margins of all the streams, 

 and in almost every locality of moist land not subject to annual fires, 

 groves of them abound, which produce in some years large quan- 

 tities of excellent fruit. No wild fruit more readily responds to 

 cultivation, in producing quantity and improvement in quality, 

 and I would invite increased attention to its merits on the part of 

 the State Horticultural Society, and also on the part of those who 

 cannot give the subject of fruit culture much attention. There 

 are hundreds of homes all over the country entirely without fruit, 

 that might be provided with it by a small outlay of time and labor, 

 without money, in the cultivation of native plums. President 

 Harris says, in the last report : 



" We have some choice native varieties well worthy of propaga- 

 tion." I believe this statement so true, is not appreciated in full, 

 as with one or two exceptions, these choice varieties are compara- 

 tively unknown, or at the most have only a local celebrity, and the 

 object of this paper is to call the attention of the society to them, 

 that their merits may be discussed and compared, and the results 

 disseminated, which is a shorter and better method for the masses 

 to obtain good fruit than individual experimenting. 



This fruit has received from the Illinois and Iowa Societies, 

 marked notice. 



