ROSACES 



521 



2. Flowers in axillary umbels or corymbs- fruit %' in diameter or less. BIRD CHERRIES. 



9. Prunus Pennsylvanica, L. Wild Red Cherry. Bird Cherry. 



Leaves oblong-lanceolate, sometimes slightly falcate, acuminate or rarely acute, 

 and finely and sharply serrate, with incurved teeth often tipped with minute glands, 

 when they unfold bronze-green, pilose below and slightly viscid, soon becoming 

 green and glabrous, and at maturity bright and lustrous on the upper, rather paler 

 on the lower surface, 3'-4^' long and -f'-l^' wide, turning bright clear yellow some 

 time before falling in the autumn; their petioles slender, glabrous or slightly pilose, 

 |'-1' long, and often glandular above the middle; stipules acuminate, glandular-ser- 

 rate, early deciduous. Flowers appearing in early May when the leaves are about 

 half grown, or at the extreme north and at high elevations as late as the 1st of July, 

 ^' in diameter, on slender pedicels nearly 1' long, in 4 or 5-flowered umbels or corymbs ; 

 calyx-tube broadly obconic, glabrous, marked in the mouth of the throat by a con- 

 spicuous light orange-colored band, the lobes obtuse, red at the apex, and reflexed 

 after the flowers open; petals \' long, nearly orbicular, contracted at the base into 



short claws, creamy white. Fruit ripening from the 1st of July to the 1st of Sep- 

 tember, globose, \' in diameter, with a thick light red skin, thin sour flesh, and an 

 oblong thin-walled slightly compressed stone, pointed at the apex, rounded at the 

 base, about T 8 B ' long, and ridged on the ventral suture. 



A tree, with bitter aromatic bark and leaves, 30^40 high, with a trunk often 18'- 

 20' in diameter, regular slender horizontal branches forming a narrow head usually 

 more or less rounded at the summit, and slender branchlets light red and sometimes 

 slightly puberulous at first, soon glabrous, bright red, lustrous and covered with pale 

 raised lenticels in their first winter, and developing in their second year short thick 

 spur-like lateral branchlets and then covered with dull red bark marked by bright 

 orange-colored lenticels, the outer coat easily separable from the brilliant green 

 inner bark; at the extreme northern and western limits of its range often a low 

 shrub. Bark of young stems and of the branches smooth and thin, bright reddish 

 brown, becoming on old trunks \'-\' thick, and separating horizontally into broad 

 persistent papery dark red-brown plates marked by irregular horizontal band's of 

 orange-colored lenticels and broken into minute persistent scales. Wood light, soft, 



