230 



PRUNUS 



the other two in the following respects : it is a tree sometimes of full middle 

 size (they are more or less dwarf or shrubby) ; the leaves are more coarsely 

 toothed and hairy beneath ; the fruit is not acid. The following varieties are 

 the most notable of those in cultivation : 



Var. ASPLENIFOLIA. Leaves deeply and irregularly toothed. Var. 

 LACINIATA is the same or very similar. 



Var, DECUMANA, Koch (P. macrophylla, Poiret}. A remarkable variety 



with large single flowers and enormous 

 leaves, often 8 to 10 ins. long, and broad in 

 proportion. 



Var. FLORE PLENO. This, 'the most 

 beautiful of gean cherries, and one of the 

 most beautiful of all flowering trees, has 

 been known perhaps for two centuries. 

 Healthy trees never fail to flower in the 

 utmost profusion, every branch and twig 

 being wreathed from end to end with thick 

 pendulous masses of the purest white blossom. 

 Each flower is about \\ ins. across, and 

 consists of, perhaps, thirty to forty petals 

 lasting long in beauty ; fruits are rarely or 

 never formed. 



Var. NANA. A dwarf stunted form with 

 single flowers. Useful to represent the species 

 where space is limited. 



Var. PENDULA. Branches pendulous, but 

 too stiffly so to be attractive. 



Var. PRjEMORSA. Leaves of curious shape, 

 with the appearance of the ends having been 

 bitten off. 



P. BESSEYI, Bailey. 

 ROCKY MOUNTAIN CHERRY. 



(Bot. Mag., t. 8156.) 



A dwarf deciduous shrub, 2 to 4 ft. high, 

 with smooth branchlets. Leaves grey-green, 

 oval or oval-lanceolate, sometimes obovate, 

 I to 2^ ins. long, shallowly toothed on the 

 upper two-thirds, smooth. Flowers in stalk- 

 less clusters of two to four from the buds 

 of the previous year's shoots ; each flower 

 P u , re white > in. across, on a stalk \ in long ; 

 calyx green, with ovate, slightly toothed lobes. 

 Fruit on more or less pendent stalks, oblong 



or nearly round, in. long, covered with a purplish bloom at first, finally black. 

 Native of the hot, dry plains east of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, 

 Nebraska, Kansas, etc., where it promises to be a valuable fruit-bearing 

 shrub. It is remarkably prolific there, and in Colorado sixteen quarts of 

 fruit have been gathered from a bush three years old, and eighty fruits from 

 a branch I ft. long. It was introduced to Kew in 1900, and has proved to be 

 an ornamental little shrub, flowering so freely in late April or early May as 

 to make each twig a cylindrical mass of blossom. Its fruits are only sparingly 

 borne in England, but the species is worth the notice of fruit-growers in 

 S. Africa, Australia, and other colonies with a dry sunny climate. P. UTAHENSIS, 

 Koehne^ is believed to be a hybrid between P. Besseyi and P. Watsoni ; it 



PBUNUS BESSEYI. 



