76 Plums and Plum Culture 



pearance. There are no test characters by which these 

 plums can be separated with certainty from the true 

 Chicasaws. Still, they are sufficiently distinct to be 

 considered by themselves and to have, been made a 

 separate species by Professor Sargent. 



In a wild state the fruit is comparatively very fine. 

 While all native species of plums seem to have been 

 gathered from the wild trees and used with consid- 

 erable satisfaction by early settlers, no other plums 

 seem to me to have served the pioneers so well. 



The sand plum is found wild chiefly in Kansas 

 in detached areas on the sandy lands along the Arkan- 

 sas and Republican rivers. It is said to occur also in 

 southwestern Nebraska. It is occasionally found in 

 Oklahoma, and there is good reason to believe that it 

 reaches also into the Texas panhandle. 



A letter written me by Mr. D. M. Adams of Sum- 

 ner county, Kansas, contains so much information 

 about these plums that I venture to reproduce it en- 

 tire. He says: 



"This plum grows wild in this country along the Arkan- 

 sas river. The best patch of wild ones I have seen was on 

 the bank of the Arkansas at the mouth of Slate Creek, a few 

 miles above Gueda Springs. There was about forty acres in 

 the patch that had been left in its natural state. The ground 

 looked like a barren sand bank. There was no grass, weeds, 

 or any other shrubbery except a few wild grapevines. It was 

 a hot day in August. The sand was so hot that the boys 

 could not walk over it in their bare feet. The bushes grew 

 down to high-water mark in the river. Most of the hills were 

 about ten feet above the level of the river. The person that 

 owned the land sold the fruit and let us pick it. They watched 

 and had it picked clean as they went. It was about the middle 

 of August. They had been picking for a month, and thought 

 that there would be plums there for another month. The 

 bushes were from three to six feet high. The plums were 

 brown, the size of a May cherry, the size of Damson plum. 

 Some were a bright scarlet, the color of a cherry, others were 

 a bright yellow, or amber color. Where they had not been 

 picked, the bushes were bending to the ground with their load 

 of fruit. The fruit was so thick as almost to hide the leaves. 



