74 THE PLUMS OF NEW YORK. 



ment of Agriculture a few miles south of Houghton Lake, Roscommon 

 County, Michigan. 



This plum is not yet introduced into cultivation and it is doubtful 

 if the wild fruits have sufficient merit to make an attempt at domestication 

 promising. While the wild fruits are locally used for various culinary pur- 

 poses it is so much inferior to other native plums, being almost uneatable 

 unless cooked, that its cultivation would hardly warrant the effort. 

 Arboretum specimens of the tree show it to be somewhat desirable as an 

 ornamental, being a small, compact, upright plant, very floriferous, and 

 bearing an abundance of rather attractive fruit. 



14. PRUNUS SUBCORDATA Bentham 



I. Bentham PI. Hartweg. 308. 1848. 2. Torrey Pac. R. Rpt. 4:82. 1854. 3. Brewer and 

 Watson Bot. Calif. 1:167. 1880 (in part). 4. Lemmon Pittonia 2:68. 1890. 5. Greene Fl. Fran- 

 cis 1:49. 1891. 6. BaUey Cornell Sta. Bui. 38:76. 1892. 7. Sargent Sil. N. Am. 4:31, 32, PI. 

 154. 1892. 



Tree small, rarely attaining a height of twenty-five feet, sometimes a shrub ten 

 or twelve feet high and often a bush but three or four feet in height; trunk medium 

 in length with a diameter of 8 to 12 inches; bark gray-brown and deeply fissured; 

 branches stout and spreading; branchlets glabrous or pubescent, bright red becoming 

 darker red and finally a dark-brown or gray; lenticels minute, whitish. 



Leaves round-ovate, sub-cordate or truncate, or sometimes cuneate at the base; 

 margins either sharply or obtusely serrate, sometimes doubly serrate; young leaves 

 pubescent but at maturity nearly glabrous, somewhat coriaceous, dark green on the 

 upper and pale green on the lower surface, with very conspicuous midribs and veins; 

 stipules acute-lanceolate, caducous. 



Flowers white, fading to rose, about an inch across; appearing before the leaves; 

 usually borne in threes, often in pairs on short pubescent pedicels; calyx campanulate, 

 with lobes pubescent on the outer and hairy on the inner surface; petals twice 

 the length of the sepals, obovate, and contracted into short claws; filaments and ovary 

 glabrous; style slender and funnel-shaped at the apex. 



Fruit ripens in late summer or early autumn; roundish or oblong, about one inch 

 in length, borne on a short, stout stem, dark red or purplish; flesh subacid, well-flavored, 

 clinging to the flattish or turgid stone which varies greatly in size, pointed at both ends, 

 crested on the ventral edge and grooved on the other. 



Prunus subcordata, the Pacific or Western plum, is an inhabitant 

 of the region east of the Coast Range from southern Oregon to central 

 California. It is so rarely found on the seacoast as to have escaped the 

 attention of the early botanists and remained unknown until the middle 

 of the Nineteenth Century, when Hartweg, working in the interior of 



