196 PRACTICAL FORESTRY. 



finely and sharply serrate, smooth or soft-downy beneath. 

 Fruit round, nearly a half-incii in diameter, dark-purplish or 

 black, acid and slightly bitter. This species may be only a 

 southern variety of our northern Beech Plum (P. maritima). 

 A shrub or small tree in light, sandy soils. South Carolina and 

 Florida. 



Of the foreign species and varieties, there are such a vast 

 number, that I cannot afford the space that would be required 

 to mention them all, however briefly, besides they are mostly 

 fruit or small ornamental trees of no especial interest to the 

 practical forester. The common Sweet Cherry of our gardens 

 is descended from the Prunus Cerasus of Europe, or may be 

 Asia, as its native country is not positively known, for it has 

 run wild all over Europe, as well as in our Eastern States. The 

 sweet varieties are separated in a class by themselves, under the 

 general name of Bigarreau cherries, while the more dwarf and 

 acid varieties are called Morellos. There are many handsome 

 ornamental varieties of each, both weeping, double-flowering. 

 China, Japan, Nepal, the Himalayas, and various countries in 

 Southern as well as Northern Europe, have given us numer- 

 ous species and varieties of the genus. 



QUERCUS, Linn Oak. 



An extensive genus of nearly two hundred and fifty species, 

 distributed throughout the temperate regions of Asia, Europe, 

 and North America. It includes both evergreen and deciduous 

 trees and shrubs, with alternate, simple, or pinnately-veined 

 leaves. Staminate flowers in slender, drooping catkins. Pis- 

 tillate flowers, solitary, in clusters, or sometimes in spikes, ses- 

 sile in a cup-like, scaly involucre, which enlarges into a rough 

 cup around the base of a single, one-seeded nut or acorn. The 

 cotyledons thick and fleshy, remaining underground in germi- 

 nation, like those of the common garden pea, not lifted above 

 the surface as in the bean. For more than a hundred years the 

 botanists of the world have been at work at this most difficult 

 genus, and while in a measure they have brought " order out 

 of chaos,' 1 and especially in our North American species, there 

 is still much to be done before the oaks of the world are scien- 

 tifically described and correctly classified. The great work of 

 F. Andrew Michaux & Son, on the American Oaks and other 

 trees, published in Paris 1810-13, under the name of " North 

 American Sylva," and later published in this country, will long 



