ROSACE^E 573 



ranks becoming acuminate, glandular-serrate above the middle, with bright red tips, scari- 

 ous, and \' long. Bark about \' thick, with a generally smooth dark brown surface marked 

 by horizontal light gray interrupted bands and by rows of oblong orange-colored lenticels. 

 Wood close-grained, soft and brittle, brown streaked with green, with paler sapwood of 8-10 

 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution Usually near the banks of streams in low rich soil, or less commonly on 

 dry hillsides; valley of the upper Jocko River, Montana, on the mountain ranges of Idaho 

 and Washington and of southern British Columbia to Vancouver Island, and southward on 

 the coast and interior ranges to the neighborhood of the bay of San Francisco, on the west- 

 ern slopes of the Sierra Nevada up to altitudes of 5000-6000 above the sea to the head of 

 Kern River, on the Santa Lucia, San Rafael, and San Bernardino Mountains, California, on 

 the Washoe Mountains, Nevada, and the mountains of northern Arizona ; of its largest size 

 on Vancouver Island, in western Oregon and Washington, and on the Santa Lucia Moun- 

 tains; on the coast ranges of middle California and on the Sierra Nevada commonly a shrub 

 5-8 high. 



14. Primus virginiana L. Choke Cherry. 



Leaves oval, oblong or obovate, abruptly short-pointed at apex, cuneate, rounded cr 

 rarely slightly cordate at base, and sharply often doubly serrate with spreading subulate 

 teeth, glabrous when they unfold or furnished below with axillary tufts of pale hairs, and at 

 maturity dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, light green or pale on the lower sur- 



face, 2'-4' long and l'-2' wide; turning bright clear yellow in the autumn before falling; peti- 

 oles slender, biglandular near apex, or on vigorous shoots sometimes many-glandular, \'-V 

 in length; stipules lanceolate, about \' long, early deciduous. Flowers opening from April 

 to the end of June, \'-\' in diameter, on slender glabrous pedicels from the axils of scarious 

 caducous bracts, in erect or nodding racemes 3 '-6' in length; calyx-tube cup-shaped, globose, 

 the lobes short, obtuse, laciniate and more or less glandular on the margins; petals orbicu- 

 lar, contracted into a short claw, white; filaments and pistil glabrous, the short thick style 

 abruptly enlarged into a broad orbicular stigma. Fruit globose or occasionally slightly 

 elongated, \'-%' in diameter, lustrous, bright red at first when fully grown, becoming at 

 maturity scarlet, dark vinous red or nearly black, or rarely bright canary color (var. leu- 

 cocarpa S. Wats.), with a thick lustrous skin, and dark juicy flesh, austere and astringent, 

 becoming at maturity less astringent and sometimes edible; stone oblong-ovoid broadly 

 ridged on one suture and acute on the other. 



A tree occasionally 20-25 high, with a straight trunk sometimes G'-8' in diameter, 

 small erector horizontal branches, and slender glabrous red-brown or orange-brown lustrous. 



