KOSACE^E 567 



ing into numerous erect rigid branches, and branchlets at first coated with pale caducous 

 pubescence, becoming dark red and rather lustrous in their first winter, and ultimately 

 nearly black, and unarmed, or sometimes armed with stout spinescent lateral spur-like 

 branchlets. Winter-buds acuminate or obtuse, iV long, their inner scales accrescent, scari- 

 ous, oblong, acute, f long, bright red at apex. Bark \' thick, dark brown, fissured and 



broken on the surface into thin persistent scales. Wood heavy, hard, close-grained, brown 

 tinged with red, with thin pale sap wood of 10-12 layers of annual growth. The fruit is 

 made into preserves, jellies and jams. 



Distribution. Low moist soil, often forming shrubby thickets sometimes of considerable 

 extent, and dry ridges; slopes of Tusseys Mountain in the northwestern part of Hunting- 

 don County, and over the main range of the Alleghany Mountains into Clearfield and Elk 

 Counties, Pennsylvania; rocky ridges near the Natural Bridge, Rockbridge County, Vir- 

 ginia, and lower slopes of Peak Mountain on South Fork of Buffalo Creek, Ashe County, 

 North Carolina (W. W. Ashe), and in southern Connecticut; of its largest size on limestone 

 bluffs south of the Little Juniata River, Pennsylvania. A shrubby variety with leaves 

 broader in proportion to their length and less acuminate at apex (var. Davisii Wight) oc- 

 curs in Roscommon and Montmorency Counties, Michigan. 



9. Prunus hortulana Bailey. Wild Plum. 



Leaves oblong-obovate to oblong-oval or rarely to oblong-lanceolate, acuminate and 

 contracted at apex into a long slender point, cuneate or more or less rounded at the narrow 

 base, and finely serrate with incurved lanceolate glandular teeth, when they unfold pilose 

 with slender white hairs, and at maturity glabrous above, pilose below in the axils of the 

 primary veins and along the midrib with tawny hairs, thin but firm, dark green and lustrous 

 on the upper surface paler oji the lower surface, 4'-6' long and !'-!' wide, with a broad 

 conspicuous orange-colored midrib, primary veins connected near the margins of the leaf, 

 and prominent reticulate veinlets; petioles slender, orange-colored, l'-l' in length and 

 furnished above the middle with numerous scattered dark glands; stipules lanceolate, 

 acuminate, glandular-serrate, early deciduous. Flowers appearing in April or early in 

 May when the leaves are about one-third grown, f'-l' in diameter, on slender puberulous 

 pedicels \' long, in 2-4-flowered umbels; calyx-tube narrow-obconic, the lobes about as long 

 as the tube, oblong-ovate, acute or rounded at apex, glandular-serrate, glabrous or puberu- 

 lous on the outer surface, pubescent or tomentose on the inner surface chiefly toward the 

 base, reflexed after the unfolding of the narrow oval or oblong-orbicular petals rounded and 

 occasionally emarginate at apex, contracted below into a long narrow claw, entire, erose, or 

 occasionally serrate, and white often marked with orange toward the base. Fruit ripening 

 in September and October, on stout stems, globose or rarely ellipsoid, f'-l' in diameter, 



