The Plums and the Cherries 



Cherry brandies and cordials are put away against an emergency, 

 and cherry bounce is a good old-fashioned beverage that long 

 ago got into the story books. Old settlers, frugal as they were 

 wise, simply chewed the opening buds in the spring "to purify 

 their blood," and to save doctors' bills at the same time. 



The chief value, however, of this cherry is its wood. It is 

 beautiful enough when polished to compete in popularity with 

 mahogany and rosewood. Its rich, lustrous brown deepens and 

 softens with age. Woodwork in sumptuously built houses, parlour 

 cars and steamships is often done in cherry. Fine furniture is 

 made of it. Small pieces are used in inlay work, for tool handles, 

 and the like. It is so costly that it is largely used in veneering 

 cheaper woods. A sharp look on unfinished edges of chairs, 

 bureau drawers and similar articles will detect this. Birch 

 furniture, which is much cheaper and more crude in colour, is 

 often sold under the name of "solid cherry" or "solid mahogany." 



As a shade and ornamental tree the black cherry is charmingly 

 unconventional. It is somewhat wayward in habit and sparse 

 in foliage, but it carries neither trait to extremes. The foliage 

 mass is carried with the grace of a willow, for the leaves are narrow 

 and pointed, and they hang on slender petioles. 



While the opening leaves are still red the flowers come on, in 

 dainty, erect racemes that bloom from the bottom upward to the 

 top. The heavy fruits invert the clusters, and remain until late 

 summer. They are sweet and not unpleasant in flavour, eaten 

 before they are thoroughly ripe by birds and by children. 



The Choke Cherry (Prunus Virginiana, Linn.) is a minia- 

 ture tree, as a rule, rarely growing higher than a thrifty lilac 

 bush except in the region between Nebraska and northern Texas. 

 Its shiny bark, racemed flowers and fruit, and the odour of its 

 leaves and bark may lead one to confuse it with a black cherry 

 sapling. But this mistake need not occur. The leaves and 

 bark of the black cherry are aromatic and pungent, and the taste 

 is bitter. The choke cherry exhales an odour that is rank and 

 disagreeable beside being pungent, and the taste is intensified 

 in the same unpleasant way. The leaves of choke cherry are 

 nearly twice as broad as those of P. serotina, and abruptly pointed; 

 its fruit, until dead ripe, is red (or yellow), and so puckery, harsh 

 and bitter that children, who eat the black cherries eagerly, 

 cannot be persuaded to taste choke cherries a second time. 

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