CHERRIES AND GRABAPPLES 207 



In 1904, I had the pleasure of discovering it growing 

 wild in thickets on the frontier of western China and 

 Thibet and collected seeds from which plants have 

 been successfully raised. 



A very desirable plant is M. atrosanguinea which 

 is a hybrid presumably between M. Halliana and 

 M. Sieboldii. It is a broad shrub growing ten feet 

 or more high with thin spreading and arching branches 

 and rose-pink flowers. 



Perhaps the best known of the Asiatic Crabapples 

 is M. floribunda, which was introduced about 1853, 

 by von Siebold, into Leiden in Holland, yet its native 

 country remains unknown to this day. Present- 

 day Japanese botanists seem unacquainted with this 

 plant and both they and Japanese nurserymen con- 

 fuse it with the Parkman Crab, and during my trip 

 in Japan I never met with it. However, since our 

 gardens are in fortunate possession of it we can waive 

 the more academic question of its habitat. It 

 is a broad, round-topped, tree-like shrub sometimes 

 twenty-five feet tall, and as much in diameter, with 

 slender arching and pendent branchlets. The clus- 

 tered flowers are pure white when expanded and 

 bright rose color in bud, and as they open in succes- 

 sion the contrast is singularly beautiful. The fruit 

 is about the size of a pea, yellowish or yellow-brown 



