252 . CERASUS. 
flowers, its pendent racemes of black fruit, and its yellowish, satiny wood. To 
western Asia also belongs the laurel cherry, (Cerasus laurocerasus,) a beautiful 
evergreen tree, known at once, from all other species of the genus, by its large, 
smooth, yellowish-green, shining leaves, and its pale-green petioles, and young 
shoots. It is less hardy than the Portugal laurel cherry, (Cerasus lusitanica,) a 
large, evergreen tree, growing to a height of sixty or seventy feet, the branches of 
which, in England, are frequently killed back by the frost, and in Germany is 
almost everywhere treated as a green-house plant. .Among the North American 
species worthy of culture, are the black cherry-tree, (Cerasus nigra,) a tall shrub, 
indigenous to Canada and the Alleghany Mountains, distinguished for its pleas- 
ing lowers, with purplish anthers, which, like those of the plum, appear before 
the leaves; the Cerasus mollis, a tree from twelve to twenty feet in height, a 
native of the subalpine hills, near the source of the river Columbia, as well as 
near its mouth ; and the Cerasus emarginata, known by its white flowers, glo- 
bose, astringent fruit, and red wood, with white spots, found wild along the 
same river. To these we will add the Cerasus borealis, Cerasus virginiana anc 
its varieties, and the Cerasus caroliniana. 
