190 AMELANCHIER AMORPHA 



Native of Canada, Newfoundland, and the northern United States, and the 

 most northerly of the Amelanchiers, inhabiting cold swamps and mountain bogs. 

 It is extremely rare in cultivation, the plant usually supplied by nurserymen for 

 it being a form of A. canadensis. It is easily distinguished by its few-flowered 

 inflorescence and the rounded petals ; and differs from all other species in 

 cultivation by the prussic acid odour of the bark when bruised like that of 

 many cherries and almonds. 



A. RUBESCENS, Greene. 



A shrub with dov\ny branchlets. Leaves orbicular or broadly obovate, 

 \ to i in. long, dark green above, the lower surface glaucous and covered 

 with a fine close down, very distinct from the loose woolly covering of the 

 young leaves of most Amelanchiers ; the upper surface is furnished with 

 scattered, flattened hairs ; margins set with sharp, triangular, comparatively 

 large teeth, more especially towards the apex. Flowers pure white, \ to f in. 

 across, three to six together in a short raceme ; petals oval-lanceolate, half as 

 long again as the sepals, which are narrow and linear; stamens ten; styles 

 united. 



Native of New Mexico, Utah, etc., at elevations of 3000 to 5coo ft. 

 Introduced to England by way of Germany in 1900, and first flowered at Kew 

 in April 1910. It probably finds the climate of Britain too dull to bring out its 

 best qualities ; and so far, at any rate, is nothing like so free-flowering and 

 ornamental as the other species. It is allied to A. UTAHENSIS, Koehne, another 

 species from the same region with blunter leaves, fifteen to twenty stamens to 

 each flower, and free styles. 



A. VULGARIS, Moench. SNOWY MESP1LUS. 



(Gardeners' Chronicle, 1890, i., fig. 104.) 



A low tree, 15 to 20 ft. high, or more often a shrub. Leaves roundish 

 oval, very downy and pure white beneath when young, becoming nearly or quite 

 smooth at maturity, i to \\ ins. long, f to i in. wide ; the margin sometimes 

 quite entire, but usually more or less toothed, especially towards the apex. 

 Racemes erect, carrying few but large white flowers often i^ ins. in diameter. 

 Petals narrowly oblong; calyx covered with loose floss at first, its lobes 

 triangular. Fruit at first red, then black, covered with a purplish bloom; about 

 the size of a black currant, eatable but not very palatable. 



Native of the mountains of Central and S. Europe ; of unrecorded introduc- 

 tion, but in cultivation more than two hundred years ago. It has the largest 

 individual flowers of all the Amelanchiers as seen in cultivation, ancl is very 

 beautiful in late April or early May. One of its forms, 



Var. CRETICA, is found as far eastwards as Dalmatia and Crete, and is a 

 shrub covered with a close white down on leaf, young wood, calyx, and flower- 

 stalk. Another form with always entire leaves is called var. INTEGRIFOLIA. 



AMORPHA. LEGUMINOS^:. 



A genus of shrubs exclusively native of N. America, with alternate 

 pinnate leaves and elongated racemes of blue, purple, or white flowers. 

 These plants belong to the pea-flowered group of Leguminosse, but the 

 flowers, instead of having the normal five petals (namely, the standard 

 petal, the two wing petals, and the two forming the keel), have but one 

 the standard. The flowers, however, are so crowded that the others are 



