ROSACEA, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 31 
PRUNUS SUBCORDATA. 
Wild Plum. 
CALYX-LOBES pubescent or puberulous. Stone flattened or turgid, pointed at the 
two ends. Leaves broadly ovate to orbicular. 
Prunus subcordata, Bentham, Pl. Hartweg. 308. — Wal- Bot. Cal. i. 167 (in part). —J. G. Lemmon, Pittonia, ii. 
pers, Ann. ii. 464.— Torrey, Pacific R. R. Rep. iv. 82.— 68. — Greene, Fl. Francis. 49; Garden and Forest, iv. 
Newberry, Pacific R. R. Rep. vi. 73. — Brewer & Watson, 255. 
A small tree, twenty to twenty-five feet in height, with a trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, 
dividing, six or eight feet from the ground, into stout almost horizontal branches ; or often a shrub, 
with stout ascending stems ten or twelve feet tall, or a low scraggy much branched bush. The bark of 
the trunk is a quarter of an inch thick, gray-brown, deeply fissured, and divided into long thick plates, 
their surface broken into minute persistent scales. The young branchlets are glabrous or pubescent, 
and are covered with bright red bark marked by occasional minute pale lenticels, and in their second 
year become darker red or purple, ultimately turning dark brown or. ashy gray. The winter-buds are 
acute and an eighth of an inch long, and are covered with chestnut-brown scales with scarious margins, 
those of the inner rows acerescent with the young shoots and at maturity a quarter of an inch in length, 
oblong, acute, and generally bright red. The leaves are broadly ovate or orbicular, usually cordate, 
sometimes truncate, or rarely cuneate.at the base, and are sharply and often doubly serrate; when they 
unfold they are puberulous on the upper, and pubescent on the under surface, and at maturity they are 
glabrous or more or less puberulous below, an inch to three inches long, half an inch to two inches 
broad, slightly coriaceous, dark green on the upper, and pale on the lower surface, with broad midribs, 
grooved on the upper side, and conspicuous veins. The stipules are lanceolate, acute, glandular-serrate, 
and caducous. In autumn at the north the leaves assume, before falling, brilliant scarlet and orange or 
red and yellow colors. The flowers, which appear before the leaves in March or April, are two thirds 
of an inch across and are produced in subsessile two to four-flowered umbels on slender glabrous or 
pubescent pedicels which vary from a quarter to one half of an inch in length. The calyx is campanu- 
late and glabrous or puberulous, with oblong-obovate lobes rounded at the apex, pubescent on the 
outer, and more or less covered with pale hairs on the inner surface, and half the length of the white 
petals which are obovate, rounded above and contracted at the base into short claws, and in fading turn 
rose-color. The filaments and ovary are glabrous, and the slender style is funnel-shaped at the apex. 
The fruit, which ripens in August or September, is oblong and from half an inch to an inch and a 
quarter in length, and is borne on a stout stem from half an inch to two thirds of an inch in length; 
the skin is dark red or rich purple or sometimes bright yellow; the flesh is more or less succulent, 
subacid, often of excellent flavor, and adherent to the flattened or turgid stone, which is acute at the two 
ends, narrowly wing-margined on the ventral edge, conspicuously grooved on the other, and from a 
third of an inch to an inch in length.’ 
Prunus subcordata inhabits the region west of the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains from 
1 E. W. Hammond, Garden and Forest, iii. 626. orbicular or elliptical leaves wedge-shaped at the base, and yellow 
2 J. G. Lemmon distinguishes (Pittonia, ii. 67) as variety Kelloggii, ovate juicy fruit an inch or more in length. (See Hutching’s M ‘ag- 
a form of Prunus subcordata first noticed many years ago by Dr. azine, v. 7. — Wickson, California Fruits and How to Grow Them, 
Albert Kellogg, and common in Sierra County and at the base of ed. 2, 51.— Greene, Fl. Francis. i. 49.) 
Mount Shasta, California, with ashy gray branches, nearly glabrous 
