38 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. ROSACER. 
darker and almost black when ripe; the flesh is thin, bitter, and astringent; the stone is ovoid and 
pointed at both ends, with a prominent grooved ridge on the ventral margin, and is rounded and 
slightly grooved on the other, with thick brittle and slightly pitted walls.1 
Prunus emarginata is distributed from the valley of the upper Jocko River in Montana? along the 
mountain ranges of Idaho and Washington and of southern British Columbia to Vancouver Island,? 
and through western Oregon and northern California and along the coast ranges. to the neighbor- 
hood of the Bay of San Francisco, and on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 
where it sometimes reaches an elevation of five or six thousand feet, to the Yosemite Valley; it is 
common on the Santa Lucia and San Bernardino Mountains‘ in California: on the eastern slopes 
of the Sierras it ranges to the shores of Lake Tahoe and the neighborhood of Carson City,* and it 
oceurs on the Washoe Mountains® in Nevada. Prunus emarginata grows usually near the banks of 
streams in low rich soil, or less commonly on dry hill-slopes, attaining its best dimensions on Vancouver 
Island, in western Oregon and Washington, and on the Santa Lucia Mountains of California, where, at 
elevations of from three to four thousand feet, it becomes a tree sometimes forty feet in height ; on the 
coast ranges of middle California and on the Sierra Nevada Mountains it is commonly a shrub five to 
eight feet high." 
The wood of Prunus emarginata is close-grained, soft, and brittle, and contains numerous thin 
medullary rays ; it is brown streaked with green, with paler sapwood composed of eight or ten layers 
of annual growth. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.4502, a cubic foot weighing 
28.06 pounds. 
The fruit is said to have been eaten by the Indians of the northwestern coast. 
Prunus emarginata was discovered in the valley of the Columbia River in 1825 by David Doug- 
las. 
It is cultivated as a shade tree in the streets of Portland, Oregon, where it attains the height 
of forty feet, and assumes the habit of the common European Cherry-tree ;*° in 1881 it was introduced 
from Oregon into the Arnold Arboretum, where it is perfectly hardy, flowering and ripening its fruit 
every year.” 
1 Prunus emarginata varies in the amount of pubescence which 
clothes the young shoots, the lower surface of the foliage, and the 
inflorescence. At the north it is more often pubescent than gla- 
on the tai 
of southern California. It has been distinguished as — 
Var. mollis, Brewer & Watson, Bot. Cal. i. 167.— Sargent, For- 
est Trees N. Am. 10th Census U. S. ix. 67. — Macoun, Cat. Can. Pl. 
i. 125. 
Cerasus mollis, Douglas ; Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am. i. 164.— Hooker, 
Lond. Jour. Bot. vi. 217.— Don, Gen. Syst. ii, 515.— Torrey & 
Gray, Fl. N. Am. i. 410.— Loudon, Arb. Brit. ii. 714. — Nuttall, 
Sylva, ii. 14, t. 46.— Roemer, Fam. Nat. Syn. iii. 79.— Cooper, 
Pacific R. R. Rep. xii. pt. ii. 29, 59; Am. Nat. iii. 406. — Lyall, 
Jour. Linn. Soe. vii. 131. 
Prunus mollis, Walpers, Rep. ii. 9.— Dietrich, Syn. iii. 42. — Tor- 
rey, Bot. Wilkes Explor. Exped. 284. — Macoun, Rep. Geolog. Surv. 
. Can. 1875-76, 194. 
2 Here it was found in 1883 by Canby and Sargent. 
8 Macoun, J. c. 513. 
4 The pubescent form of Prunus emarginata was discovered in 
Bear Valley in June, 1885, by Mr. S. B. Parish. 
brous, and the pubescent form is not 
5 Here it was collected in 1864 by Dr. C. L. Anderson. 
® Teste Watson, King’s Rep. v. 79. 
7 The shrubby glabrous Cherry-tree of central California is con- 
sidered by Professor Greene a species, to which he has given the: 
name of Cerasus Californica (Fl. Francis. i. 50.— Garden and For- 
est, iv. 243). Numerous forms appear to connect this plant with 
the arborescent form of the north and of the Santa Lucia Mountains: 
in the south, and its shrubby habit, small leaves, and more astringent. 
fruit are perhaps the result of the peculiar climatic conditions to . 
which it has been subjected. 
8 R. Brown (Campst.), Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinburgh, ix. 383. 
® See ii. 94. 
10 Greene, Garden and Forest, iv. 243. 
4 Prunus emarginata was probably introduced into Scotch gar- 
dens by the Scotch collector John Jeffrey in 1851 or 1852, as at 
that time he sent the seeds of many of the plants of our northwest- 
ern coast to the members of the so-called Oregon Expedition, whose 
agent he was. It was sent from the Edinburgh Botanic Garden to 
the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris in 1865, as Prunus Patto- 
niana, a name which does not appear to have been published (Car- 
riére, Rev. Hort. 1872, 135). 
