AMERICAN FOREST TREES 621 



and about half an inch long. The withered leaves are poisonous if eaten 

 by cattle. The tree is thirty or forty feet high, and eight or ten inches 

 in diameter. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong, color light brown 

 to dark, rich brown, sometimes of much beauty, but no record has been 

 found of any use for it. The tree is often planted for ornament. 



WILD PLUM (Prunus americana) is found from New Jersey to Montana, south- 

 ward to New Mexico and Texas, and extends to Florida and Mexico. Its range 

 covers about a million square miles. There are seven or more species of wild plums 

 in the United States. The fruit of all of them is edible. They have been planted 

 accidentally or otherwise in many localities where they were not found before the 

 country was settled. The plum was an important fruit in the country's early history. 

 The pioneers gathered wild fruits before planted orchards came into bearing, and the 

 plum was one of the best which nature supplied. Early travelers among the Indians 

 in the South frequently spoke of Indian peaches. Such references have led some to 

 believe that the peach was native in that region, but it is safe to conclude that what 

 was called the peach was really some species of wild plum. These fruits were among 

 the earliest to become domesticated. In fact, they were abundant about the sites 

 of Indian towns and old fields, where the savages had scattered seeds without any 

 purpose on their part of planting trees; and early settlers imitated the Indians, and 

 plums were soon growing in the vicinity of most of the cabins. As a forest tree, it 

 usually thrived best on the banks of streams, for there it could find more sunshine than 

 in the deep woods, and it bore much more fruit. The ranges of several species of 

 plums overlapped, and different sizes and colors of fruit were found in the same 

 locality even before white men assisted the spread of species. The common plum, 

 known to botanists as Prunus americana, is recognized under many names among 

 laymen; among these names are yellow plum, red plum, horse plum, hog plum, 

 August plum, native plum, and goose plum. Usually the plum's skin is red, and the 

 flesh yellow, which accounts for its names, both red and yellow. The tree ranges in 

 height from twenty to thirty-five feet, and from five to ten inches in diameter. The 

 wood is heavy, hard, and strong, and dark rich-brown. It is suitable for turnery 

 and small novelties, but little of it has been used. 



CANADA PLUM (Prunus nigra) appears to be the most northern member of the 

 plum group. It grows from Newfoundland to Manitoba, and south into the northern 

 tier of states. Its range has been much extended by planting, and a number of 

 varieties have appeared. It is twenty or thirty feet high, and five to eight inches 

 in diameter. Flowers appear in April and May, and the fruit is ripe in September 

 and October. The plums are about an inch long, orange-red in color, with yellow 

 flesh. The wood is heavy, hard, and strong. Those who cultivate this tree often 

 do so for the beauty of the flowers, rather than for the value of the fruit. The wood is 

 not used for commercial purposes. 



BLACK SLOE (Prunus umbellata), known also as southern bullace plum, hog 

 plum, and wild plum, ranges from South Carolina, round the coast through Florida, to 

 Louisiana and up the Mississippi valley into Arkansas. The tree is fifteen or twenty 

 feet high and from six to ten inches in diameter. The fruit ripens from July to 

 September, is black when ripe, and often nearly an inch long. The people where 

 it grows use it for jelly. It is not reported that the wood is used for any purpose. 



WESTERN PLUM (Prunus subcordata) grows west of the Cascade mountains 

 from southern Oregon to central California. It is often a low bush, but at its best 

 forms a tree twenty feet high and six inches in diameter, but its wood is of no economic 



