510 BUSH-FRUITS 



the fruit, and he thinks it would pay to plant them on a larger 

 scale. 



Plants may be propagated by seeds, which should be sown or 

 stratified in the fall, or by separating the suckers which spring up 

 about the main stem. They may also be grown from cuttings of 

 one or two-year-old wood, taken in the fall, or treated like 

 currant and gooseberry cuttings, though they do not root so 

 readily as these plants. 



The merits of the barberry as an ornamental plant need not 

 be further discussed, but as a fruit -producing plant it may 

 teach a lesson. We talk much of the improvement of wild 

 fruits, and are almost led to believe that we can take anything 

 that is edible, no matter how small, hard, sour, puckery or 

 thorny it may be, and by careful selection and hybridizing, pro- 

 duce from it a fruit which shall delight the taste and swell the 

 purse of coming generations. Does not the history of this fruit 

 suggest that, after all, there may be some things which are not 

 worth trying to improve? 



THE SAND CHEERY 



I cannot bring myself to close this discussion of miscellane- 

 ous bush fruits without a brief mention of the western sand 

 cherry, although its relationships might more naturally classify it 

 among the stone fruits. This plant is known botanically as Prunus 

 Besseyi, Bailey.* It is a graceful, somewhat spreading shrub, 

 3 to 4 feet high, with slender, ascending or slightly drooping 

 branches. At flowering time the leaves are small, narrowly 

 oblanceolate, and slightly whitened beneath, but at maturity they 

 become oval or elliptic, very bright and shining on both sides. 

 The flowers are borne in axillary clusters all along the younger 

 branches, so that at blossoming time these are one mass of 

 bloom. The fruit ranges from three -eighths to five -eighths of 

 an inch in diameter, and is usually very dark purple or blackish 

 in color. In flavor it resembles the improved forms of the east- 



*For a fuller account of the species, see Cornell University Experiment 

 Station Bulletin, 38 : 58-65, and 70 : 260-262. 



