356 Bush-Fruits 



and from the Saskatchewan southward to the mountains 

 of New Mexico. 



The name buffalo berry is said to have been derived 

 from the custom of eating the berries as a sauce with 

 buffalo meat. It has also been known as rabbit berry and 

 blood berry, while Crozier states l that it has even been 

 improperly called cornelian cherry. A writer in the " Gar- 

 dener's Monthly" 2 speaks of it as the Nebraska currant. 



The buffalo berry has enjoyed the distinction of re- 

 maining a new fruit for a very long time. In 1841, William 

 Oakes, in discussing the advance of spring in eastern 

 Massachusetts, mentions the buffalo berry, and inciden- 

 tally states that it was then frequently cultivated. This f 

 was the same year that our earliest cultivated blackberry 

 made its first appearance on the exhibition tables of the 

 Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and some years he- 

 fore either the black raspberry or the blackberry came 

 into general cultivation. Yet we are still talking about 

 the buffalo berry as a new fruit which ought to be intro- 

 duced. Fuller, in his "Small-Fruit Culturist," published 

 in 1867, gives a full account of it. The fruit possesses 

 good qualities, and the plant is useful in ornamental 

 planting, but it is not likely to be extensively grown as a 

 fruit-producing plant, unless it should be in localities 

 where other garden fruits fail. N. E. Hansen, of South 

 Dakota, writes that he considers it of promise only where 

 the currant does not do well. Attempts to establish it in 

 Nebraska have thus far met with indifferent results. The 

 fruit is abundant, but its large seed and the thorny habit 



1 Amer. Garden, 11:650. 

 2 1873: 23. 



