12 Plums and Plum Culture 



botanist's powers imagine also that he has some secret 

 and sure formula for telling one species from another. 

 Science ought to be exact, they think, and the scien- 

 tist who describes, names and classifies species ought 

 to be able to tell exactly whether a given specimen 

 or a given variety belongs in this species or that. And 

 such men are suprised when botanists disagree. 



But botanical science is not exact, and never can 

 be. The botanist simply has to depend on his judg- 

 ment as to whether two varieties belong in the same 

 species or not; and his judgment may be either better 

 or worse than the judgment of the man who propa- 

 gates Wildgoose and Burbank in his nursery. The 

 trouble is that the plums will not conform themselves 

 to the botanist's descriptions! 



Plums grow pretty much as they please, and the 

 botanist has to take them as he finds them. Some- 

 thing new is all the while coming up and disarranging 

 the old descriptions and classifications that we have 

 made. And then we have to make new ones. That 

 is the way botany grows. That is the way, too, that 

 pomology grows. We ought to be glad that they are 

 growing sciences, and not dead ones. 



In the following botanical review, descriptions 

 are given of the principal species of plums which have 

 been cultivated either for fruit or for ornament. As the 

 number of known species runs up into the hundreds, 

 however, and as nearly all of them bear fruit in some 

 degree edible, it will be seen that a complete review 

 of plum botany is not practicable here. Along with 

 the plums proper it is thought best to describe the 

 principal American species of the choke-cherry group 

 (section Padus), as these are more or less propagated, 

 cultivated and handled by the catholic-minded plum 

 specialists of this country, and are especially useful in 

 hvbridization. 



