8 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 
ROSACEA. 
Of the genus Prunus, now extended to include the Plums, Almonds, Peaches, Apricots, and 
Cherries, about one hundred and twenty species are distinguished. They are generally distributed over 
the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, especially in eastern Asia,’ in western and central 
Asia,” Europe,’ and North America.* The genus is represented in tropical America by numerous species,> 
and occurs in southern Asia.° It has no representative in tropical and southern Africa, in Australia, 
Polynesia, or the southern countries of South America. In North America the genus is spread from 
the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific, and from near the northern limits of tree-growth to 
southern Mexico. The territory of the United States contains at least twenty-five indigenous species, 
of which fourteen attain arborescent habit, and one is a large and important forest tree.” 
less succulent, often covered with a glaucous bloom ; stone com- 
pressed, smooth or slightly rugose, acute-margined along the ven- 
tral suture, grooved on the other. Leaves conduplicate or convo- 
lute in vernation. 
Cxrrasus (including C pl C idos, and Mi Ns 
Flowers pedicellate, fascicled, or corymbose, precocious or coeta- 
neous with the leaves. Fruit smooth or rarely pilose, with succu- 
lent flesh ; stone smooth or slightly rugose, ridged on the ventral 
suture. Leaves conduplicate in vernation. 
Papus. Flowers in slender terminal racemes, on lateral leafy or 
leafless branches of the year. Fruit subglobose, smooth, with suc- 
culent flesh ; stone turgid, ovate or obovate, thick-margined on the 
ventral suture. 
Lavrocerasus. 
of the previous year. Fruit smooth or rarely covered with a waxy 
Leaves conduplicate in vernation. 
Flowers in racemes from the axils of the leayes 
bloom ; flesh usually thin and subsucculent ; stone smooth, rugose, 
= . leeaceniee 
Pp d, obscurely margined on the ven- 
tral suture. Leaves conduplicate in vernation. 
1 Maximowiez, Bull. Acad. Sci. St. Pétersbourg, xxix. 74 (Mel. 
Biol. xi. 657). — Franchet, Pl. David. i.103 ; Pl. D yanee, i. 194. 
North America, where two small shrubby species are recognized 
(Gray, Proc. Am. Acad. x. 70). 
Armeniaca is Asiatic ; two species are now recognized. Prunus 
Armeniaca, Linneeus (Spec. 474), the Apricot, is probably a native 
of northern China and Mongolia, whence it was carried into north- 
ern India, Persia, Armenia, and other countries of southwestern 
Asia, where it has long been naturalized (A. de Candolle, Origine 
des Plantes Cultivées, 171). The second species, Prunus Mume 
(Siebold & Zucearini, FZ. Jap. i. 29, t. 11), is a native of Japan. 
Prunus, the true Plum, of which about twenty species are dis- 
tinguished, is generally distributed in the t 
p regions of 
North America and eastern and western Asia. The native country 
of Prunus domestica, Linneus (Spec. 475), the original of many of 
the races of the cultivated Plums of the Old World and the most 
important species of this section of the genus, is still undetermined. 
Many authors believe that it is a native of Anatolia and northern 
Persia, and that it was brought into Europe, where it is now widely 
naturalized, not more than two thousand years ago (A. de Candolle, 
i.c.). It has been cultivated in northern China and Japan from 
t fin 
2 Boissier, FZ. Orient. ii. 640. — Aitchison, Jour. Linn. Soc. xviii. 
50. — Franchet, Pl. du Turkestan, 57. 
8 Nyman, Conspect. Fl. Europ. 212. 
4 Torrey & Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 406.—Chapman, Fi. 119.— 
Brewer & Watson, Bot. Cal. i. 166. — Watson & Coulter, Gray’s 
Man. ed. 6, 151.— Coulter, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. i. 102 (Man. 
Pl. W. Texas). 
5 Humboldt, Bonpland & Kunth, Nov. Gen. et Spec. vi. 241, 243, 
t. 563, 564.— Kunth, Syn. Pl. Zquin. iii. 480.— Grisebach, Fl. 
Brit. W. Ind. 231. — Hooker f. Martius Fl. Brasil. xiv. pt. ii. 55. — 
Hemsley, Bot. Biol. Am. Cent. i. 367. 
§ Miquel, Fl. Ind. Bat. i. pt. i. 363. — Brandis, Forest Fl. Brit. 
Ind. 190.— Hooker f. Fl. Brit. Ind. ii. 312. . 
* Of the sections of the genus, Amygdalus is confined to eastern 
Asia, which is believed to be the home of the tree from which the 
cultivated Peach (Prunus Persica, Bentham & Hooker, Gen. i. 609) 
has been derived (A. de Candolle, Origine des Plantes Cultivées, 
176. — Bretschneider, On the Study and Value of Chinese Botanical 
Works, 10), and to southeastern Asia, where many species are 
found, particularly in Persia, Arabia, the Transcaucasian provinces, 
and Turkestan. Prunus Amygdalus, the origin of the cultivated 
i ial times, and now grows sp ly on the 
near Pekin and on those of Shensi and Kansuh (Bretschneider, 
Early European Researches inio the Flora of China, 149.— Forbes 
& Hemsley, Jour. Linn. Soc. xxiii. 218). 
Cerasus belongs to the cold and temperate parts of North Amer- 
ica, Europe, and Asia ; nearly forty species are now recognized, of 
which a larger number grow in China and Japan than in any other 
geographico-botanical region. The two most important species are 
Prunus Avium, Linneus (Fi. Svec. ed. 2, 165), and Prunus Cerasus, 
Linnzeus (Spec. 474), from which are derived the two races of garden 
Cherries (A. de Candolle, J. c. 163). The former, believed to be a 
native of the region bordering on the Caspian, has become natural- 
ized and now grows spontaneously in southern Europe as far north at 
The latter inhabits the forests of northern 
Persia, Armenia, and the Caucasus; it grows in Algiers, and in 
least as central France. 
Europe is distributed through southern Russia and the mountainous 
regions of Greece, Italy, and Spain to Scandinavia ; it has become 
naturalized in northern India (Hooker £. Fl. Brit. Ind. ii. 313) and 
Madeira (Lowe, Man. Fl. Mad. 235), and occasionally in the east- 
ern part of the United States (Darlington, Fl. Cestr. ed. 3, 73). 
Padus, with twelve or fourteen species, occurs in the temperate 
and subt 
Almond, was believed by Boissier (Fl. Orient. ii. 642) to grow on 
the Anti-Lebanon, in Turkestan and Mesopotamia, and on some of 
the mountain ranges of Persia. By cultivation this tree has spread 
through the Mediterranean basin, and now grows spontaneously in 
many of the southern countries of Europe and in northern Africa, 
where perhaps it is really indigenous (Cosson, Ann. Sci. Nat. xix. 
429. — A. de Candolle, Géographie Botanique, ii. 887). 
Emplectocladus is confined to the dry interior regions of Pacific 
regions of the two hemispheres, with its centre . 
of distribution in China and Japan. The type of this section, Pru- 
nus Padus, Linnzeus (Spec. 473), is the most widely distributed of 
the genus, growing naturally in nearly every part of northern and 
central Europe, and through Siberia, Manchuria, northern China, 
Mongolia, and northern India. 
Laurocerasus, with about twenty species, is the most generally 
distributed group of the genus. The largest number of the species 
occur in the Indian Archipelago and in tropical America ; the 
