THE PLUMS OF NEW YORK. 87 



cana plums, which were also sometimes gathered. They were excellent 

 for canning and made the finest of jelly. 



" Naturally, the settlers who went every year to the sand hills for 

 plums brought back trees to plant in the gardens they were opening. 

 Almost every farm within the range mentioned above had a few or many 

 of the dwarf trees growing. Some of these were fruitful and worth their 

 room, but most of them have now died out, or are neglected and forgotten. 

 This is because people have paid no attention to their selection, propaga- 

 tion and cultivation. Further than this, however, the sand plum has 

 often failed signally to come up to its record when transferred to cultiva- 

 tion. It seems not to adapt itself readily to a wide diversity of soils and 

 conditions." 



The sub-species is easily mistaken for the species; in herbarium speci- 

 mens it is almost impossible to distinguish between them, but in general 

 the Sand plum differs from Angustifolia in its dwarfer habit, shorter-jointed, 

 zigzag, ashy-gray branches, smaller but thicker leaves, larger, thicker 

 skinned and better flavored fruit which ripens later, and in a smaller and 

 somewhat differently marked stone. In distinguishing the two groups 

 some allowance must be made for the adaptability of plums to different 

 environments. 



PRUNUS ANGUSTIFOLIA VARIANS Wight and Hedrick 



Plant a small tree, attaining a height of twenty- five feet; trunk small but well- 

 defined; branches spreading, bushy, sometimes armed with spinescent branchlets; 

 young wood slender, more or less zigzag, usually glabrous, glossy, reddish but approach- 

 ing a chestnut-brown; lenticels few, scattered, yellowish, raised. 



Leaves oblong, oval-lanceolate or rarely slightly obovate-lanceolate, one and one- 

 fifth to two and one-fifth inches long, three-quarters to one inch broad, gradually nar- 

 rowed at the base, acute at the apex; margins very minutely glandular-serrate; upper 

 surface glabrous and somewhat lustrous; lower surface paler, glabrous or sparingly 

 hairy along the midrib and in the axils of the lateral veins; petioles slender, usually 

 reddish, about one-half inch long, pubescent along the upper side, eglandular or some- 

 times with one or two glands at the apex; stipules small, linear and glandular-dentate. 



Flowers appearing from early in March and before the leaves in the South, to the 

 middle of April and with the leaves in the North, in dried specimens about one-half 

 inch broad; pedicels three-eighths to one-half inch long, glabrous; calyx campanulate, 

 the tube glabrous; calyx-lobes usually shorter than the tube, oblong and obtuse, glab- 

 rous on the outer surface, glabrous or sometimes sparingly pubescent on the inner, 

 the margin ciliate, eglandular; petals obovate, gradually narrowed toward the base, 

 erose or entire toward the apex. 



Fruit globose or sub-globose, varying from red to yellow, usually with a light bloom; 

 stone about one-half inch long, two-fifths inch broad, turgid, ovoid to elliptic-oblong, ob- 



