52 FAMILIAR TREES 



with us it is somewhat more susceptible to the 



action of frost than its congener the Portugal 



Laurel (Prunus lusitanica). Its long racemes of 



small white flowers are produced after the young 



leaves, during April or May ; and the fruit, which is 



green at first, ripens to a pure black by October. 



This fruit, though insipid, is perfectly harmless. 



The Cherry Laurel is wild in sub-alpine woods in 



Persia, the Caucasus, and the Crimea, and was first 



introduced into Europe by Clusius in 1576. He 



received it from David Ungnad, who was at that 



time ambassador of the Emperor at Constantinople, 



and it is related that all the plants sent home by 



Ungnad to Vienna perished with the exception of 



one Horse-chestnut and one Laurel, the latter 



tree being then known as Tra'bison curma'si, the 



Trebizonde Date or Plum. Clusius's plant died 



without flowering ; but a cutting from it flowered 



in 1583. The earliest mention of the plant in 



England is in " Paradisi in sole Paradisus Terrestris ; 



or, a Garden of all Sorts of Pleasant Flowers, which 



our English Ayre will admitt to be noursed up : 



By John Parkinson, Apothecary of London" (1629). 



It is as follows : 



" Laurocerasus. The Bay Cherry. This beautiful Bay, in his 

 naturall place of growing, groweth to be a tree of a reasonable 

 bignesse and height, and oftentimes with us also, if it be pruned 

 from the lower branches ; but more usually in these colder countries 

 it groweth as a shrub or hedge bush, shooting forth many branches, 

 whereof the greater and lower are covered with a dark grayish 

 green barke, but the young ones are very green, whereon are set 

 many goodly, fair, large, thick and long leaves, a little dented 

 about the edges, of a more excellent, fresh shining green colour, and 

 far larger than any Bay leaf, and compared by many to the leaves of 



