ROSE FAMILY 



light red and lustrous, finally red brown. They develop in their 

 second year spur-like branchlets. 



Wood. Light brown, sapwood pale yellow ; light, soft, close- 

 grained. Sp. gr., 0.5023; weight of cu. ft., 31.30^5. 



Winter Buds. Brown, small, acute, often aggregated. 



Leaves. Alternate or in pairs, simple, oblong-lanceolate, three to 

 five inches long, three-quarters of an inch to an inch broad, wedge- 

 shaped or rounded at base, serrate, acute or acuminate. Feather 

 veined. They come out of the bud conduplicate and bronze green ; 

 when full grown are bright lustrous green above, paler beneath. In 

 autumn they turn a bright yellow. Petioles slender, grooved, smooth 

 or hairy, often glandular above the middle. Stipules acuminate, 

 serrate and early deciduous. 



Flowers. May, when leaves are half grown. Perfect, white, one- 

 half inch across, borne on slender pedicels in four or five-flowered 

 umbels, generally clustered, two or three together. 



Calyx. Campanulate, smooth, five-lobed ; lobes obtuse, tipped 

 with red, finally reflexed, imbricate in bud. 



Corolla. Petals five, cream-white, one-fourth of an inch long, 

 nearly orbicular, with short claws, inserted on the calyx tube. 



Stamens. Fifteen to twenty, inserted on calyx cup ; filaments 

 thread-like, smooth; anthers introrse, two-ceiled ; cells opening lon- 

 gitudinally. 



Pistil. Ovary one, superior, set in the calyx cup, smooth, one- 

 celled ; style filiform ; stigma capitate ; ovules two. 



Fruit. Drupe, globular, one-fourth of an inch in diameter, tipped 

 with remnants of the style, light red with thin skin and sour flesh. 

 July. Stone oblong ; cotyledons thick and fleshy. 



The ease with which the seeds of Primus pcnnsylvanica are disseminated 

 by birds and mountain streams, their vitality and power of germination in soil 

 where the upper layers of humus have been destroyed by fire, and the rapid 

 growth of the young plants, which soon form a covering for longer-lived trees, 

 constitute the chief value and interest of this plant, which in the northern part 

 of the country east of the mid-continental plateau, has played an important 

 part in the reproduction and preservation of the forests. 



Garden and Forest. 



The range of the Wild Red Cherry is northern, it rarely 

 goes south and then only by way of the mountain tops. In 

 its best estate the tree is fifty feet high, but ordinarily it is 

 much smaller and it often constitutes the bulk of the un- 

 dergrowth of a forest. It bears the reddish brown, shining 

 bark characteristic of all the cherries, which peels off in hor- 

 izontal strips which is also a characteristic of the cherries. 

 124 



