ROSACEJE 



525 



slightly laciniate on the margins, reflexed after the flowers open, persistent on the 

 ripe fruit; petals broadly obovate, pure white. Fruit ripening from June to Octo- 

 ber, in drooping racemes, depressed-globose, slightly lobed, \'-% in diameter, dark 

 red when fully grown, almost black when ripe, with a thin skin, dark purple juicy 

 flesh of a pleasant vinous flavor, and an oblong-obovate thin-walled stone, abont 

 ' long, acute at the apex, gradually narrowed at the base, broadly ridged on the 

 ventral and acute on the dorsal suture. 



A tree, with bitter aromatic bark and leaves, sometimes 100 high, with a trunk 

 4-5 in diameter, small horizontal branches forming a narrow oblong head, and 

 slender rather rigid glabrous branchlets at first pale green or bronze color, soon be- 

 coming bright red or dark brown tinged with red, red-brown or gray-brown and 

 marked by minute pale lenticels during their first winter, and bright red the follow- 

 ing year; usually much smaller and occasionally toward the northern limits of its 

 range shrub-like in habit. "Winter-buds obtuse, or on sterile shoots acute, with 

 bright chestnut-brown broadly ovate scales keeled on the back and apiculate at the 

 apex, those of the inner ranks becoming scarious at maturity, acuminate, and '-' 

 long. Bark ^'-f ' thick, broken by reticulated fissures into small irregular plates scaly 

 on the surface, and dark red-brown, or near the Gulf coast light gray or nearly white. 



Wood light, strong, rather hard, close straight-grained, with a satiny surface, light 

 brown or red, with thin yellow sapwood of 10-12 layers of annual growth; largely 

 used in cabinet-making and the interior finish of houses. The bark, especially that 

 of the branches and roots, yields hydrocyanic acid used in medicine as a tonic and 

 sedative. The ripe fruit is used to flavor alcoholic liquors. 



Distribution. Nova Scotia westward through the Canadian provinces to the 

 northern shore of Lake Superior, and southward through the eastern states to the 

 shores of Matanzas Inlet and Tampa Bay, Florida, and westward to Dakota, eastern 

 Nebraska and Kansas, the Indian Territory and eastern Texas; on the mountain 

 ranges of western Texas, southern New Mexico and Arizona, and southward to Co- 

 lombia and Peru ; in the United States usually in rich moist soil ; once very abundant 

 in all the Appalachian region, reaching its greatest size on the slopes of the high 

 Alleghany Mountains from west Virginia to Georgia and Alabama; sometimes on 

 low sandy soil, and often in New England on rocky cliffs within reach of the spray 



