ROSACEA, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 25 
PRUNUS ALABAMENSIS. 
Wild Cherry. 
CALYX-LOBES persistent. Stone ovoid, compressed. Leaves oval, broadly ovate or 
obovate, pubescent below. 
Prunus Alabamensis, Mohr, Bull. Torrey Bot. Club, xxvi. Prunus serotina neo-montana, Mohr, Contrib. U. S. Nat. 
118 (1899); Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. vi. 552 (Plant Herb. vi. 552 (Plant Life of Alabama) (not Sudworth) 
Life of Alabama). (1901). 
A tree, from twenty-five to thirty feet in height, with a short trunk covered with dark rough bark 
separating freely into small thin scales and rarely ten inches in diameter, and spreading, somewhat 
drooping branches. The branchlets, which are slender and marked by numerous small dark lenticels, 
are coated when they first appear with pale tomentum and are dark red-brown during their first 
season, nearly glabrous before winter, and much darker in their second year. The leaves are oval, 
broadly ovate, or occasionally obovate, acute, short-pointed or rounded at the apex, cuneate, rounded, 
or rarely slightly obcordate at the base, and finely serrate, with incurved teeth tipped with minute or 
sometimes near the base of the blade with larger dark glands ; when they unfold they are coated below 
and on the upper side of the midribs with fine pubescence, and at maturity they are thick and firm in 
texture, four or five inches long and usually about two inches wide, dark dull green and glabrous on 
the upper surface, and dull and covered on the lower surface with short simple or forked hairs which 
lengthen, are most abundant and sometimes rufescent on the slender midribs and primary veins; they 
are borne on short grooved tomentose ultimately pubescent petioles which are eglandular or occasionally 
furnished near the apex with one or two large dark glands. The stipules are lanceolate, acuminate, 
glandular-serrate, bright red like the accrescent inner bud-scales, about half an inch long, and caducous. 
The flowers, which appear during the first week of May when the leaves are about half grown, are 
produced on spreading or erect pubescent racemes three or four inches long, and are borne on 
pubescent pedicels from the axils of ovate or obovate acuminate bright pink caducous bracts; they 
are about one quarter of an inch in diameter when fully expanded, with a broad cup-shaped puberulous 
calyx-tube, short almost triangular calyx-lobes, white nearly orbicular petals abruptly narrowed into 
short claws, glabrous filaments and pistil, and a thick club-shaped stigma. The fruit ripens late in 
September and is subglobose or short-oblong, surrounded at the base by the persistent calyx and 
filaments of the flower, one third of an inch in diameter, and dark red or finally nearly black. The 
stone is ovoid, somewhat compressed, ridged on the ventral margin, with a broad low ridge, slightly 
grooved on the dorsal margin, and a quarter of an inch long. 
Prunus Alabamensis grows on a few of the summits of the low mountains of central Alabama,’ and 
was discovered in July, 1892, by Dr. Charles Mohr.’ It is well distinguished from Prunus serotina 
by its usually oval comparatively broader and less acuminate dull leaves pubescent on the lower surface, 
by its pubescent racemes and calyx, and by the fact that it flowers and ripens its fruit several weeks 
later in the season than that species. 
1 Rocky heights of the Alpine Mountains, Talladega County, at plers’ Mountain, Childersburg, Talladega County, C. D. Beadle, 
two thousand feet altitude, C. Mohr, September, 1892, and Septem- 1899. 
ber, 1893 ; summit of Red Mountain, Birmingham, at an elevation 2 Seeiv.90. Dr. Mohr died at Asheville, North Carolina, on the 
of one thousand feet, C. Mohr, May, 1898, C. S. Sargent, October, 17th of July, 1901, only a few days before the publication by the 
1898, April, 1900, C. D. Beadle, July, 1899 ; Talladega and Crum- United States of his Plant Life of Alabama, his most important 
botanical work. 
