ROSACEA. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 53 
PRUNUS ILICIFOLIA. 
Islay. 
CALYX-LOBES acute, entire. Stone ovate, slightly compressed. Leaves ovate to 
lanceolate-acuminate, coarsely spinosely toothed or rarely entire. 
‘Prunus ilicifolia, Walpers, Rep. ii. 10.— Dietrich, Syn. Beechey, 340, t. 83. — Torrey & Gray, #7. N. Am. i. 411. — 
iii. 43. — Torrey, Bot. Mex. Bound. Surv. 63; Bot. Nuttall, Sylva, ii. 16, t. 47. —Torrey, Zmory’s Rep. 139; 
Wilkes Explor. Exped. 285.— Brewer & Watson, Bot. Pacific R. R. Rep. iv. 83. — Walpers, Ann. iv. 654. — 
Cal. i. 168 ; ii. 448. — Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th Kellogg, Proc. Cal. Acad. ii. 22. — Bolander, Proc. Cal. 
Census U.S. ix. 70. — Greene, Fl. Francis. 50. Acad. iii. 79; iv. 22. — The Garden, iii. 131, f. 
‘Cerasus ilicifolia, Nuttall; Hooker & Arnott, Bot. Voy. Laurocerasus ilicifolia, Roemer, Fam. Nat. Syn. iii. 92. 
A glabrous tree, twenty to thirty feet in height, with a short trunk rarely attainmg a diameter of 
two feet or rising to a greater height than ten or twelve feet, and stout spreading branches forming a 
dense compact head; usually much smaller, and often a shrub with stems sometimes only a foot or 
two in length. The bark of the trunk, which varies from one third to one half of an inch in thickness, 
is dark red-brown, its surface divided by deep fissures into small square plates. The branchlets are at 
first yellow-green or orange-colored but soon become gray or reddish brown, and are more or less con- 
spicuously marked by minute pale lenticels, and, in their second or third year, by the large leaf-scars 
left by the falling of the leaves. The buds are acuminate, with narrow dark red scales contracted into 
long slender points, those of the inner ranks being accrescent and persistent on the young shoots until 
these have obtained a length of several inches. The leaves are ovate to ovate-lanceolate, acute, rounded 
or emargiaate at the apex, wedge-shaped and rounded or truncate at the base, and very obscurely 
veined, with thickened margins coarsely spinosely toothed, the stout teeth near the base of the leaf 
often tipped with large dark glands; they are thick and coriaceous, dark green and lustrous on the 
upper, and paler and yellow-green on the lower surface, an inch to two and a half inches long, and an 
inch to an inch and a half broad, with slender yellow midribs grooved on the upper side; they are 
borne on broad channeled petioles from one eighth to one half of an inch in length, and fall during 
their second summer. The stipules are acuminate, obscurely denticulate, a quarter of an inch long, and 
early deciduous. The flowers, which are produced in slender racemes an inch and a half to three inches 
in length, on short slender pedicels developed from the axils of acuminate scarious bracts a quarter 
of an inch in length and mostly deciduous before the opening of the flower-buds, are a third of an 
inch across and appear from March to May. The calyx-tube is cup-shaped and orange-brown, with 
minute acuminate deciduous lobes reflexed at maturity and about one third as long as the obovate 
white petals which are rounded above and narrowed below into short claws. The stamens are slightly — 
exserted, with slender incurved filaments which taper from below upwards, and minute yellow anthers. 
The ovary is glabrous and abruptly contracted into a slender style usually bent near the summit at a 
right angle, or rarely erect, and surmounted with a large orbicular stigma. The fruit, which ripens in 
November and December, is subglobose, often compressed, from one half to two thirds of an inch in 
diameter, dark red when first fully grown, and purple or sometimes nearly black at maturity ; the flesh 
is thin, with a slightly acid astringent and agreeable flavor, and is easily separable from the stone. 
This is ovate, slightly compressed, pointed at the apex, light yellow-brown, and conspicuously marked 
with reticulate orange-colored vein-like lines, with three broad orange bands radiating from the base to 
the apex along one suture, and with a single narrow band along the other suture ; the walls are thin 
and brittle and are composed of two distinct coats, the inner being light yellow and lustrous on the 
