THE EARLY BOTANICAL VIEWS OF PRUNUS 
DOMESTICA LINN, 
F, A. WAUGH,. 
Tue European plums have been in cultivation so long that 
we have lost sight of their wild progenitors. This of itself is 
likely to introduce confusion into botanical notions of their spe- 
cific relationships. But this long period of cultivation presents 
a more prolific source of misunderstanding in the wide diversity 
of cultural and climatic forms which have naturally arisen. 
These forms were numerous and diverse when the binomial 
nomenclature and the Species Plantarum began to crystallize our 
notions of species and botanical varieties. Gerarde says in The 
Herball in 1597.that he had in his garden “more than three 
Score sorts, all fine and rare.” In America, especially, we have 
fallen into a very convenient way of lumping off all the culti- 
vated European plums into Prunus domestica, with some slight 
reservation for Prunus cerasifera Ehrh.; but if we go back to the 
beginning we find that the matter was not always so simple. 
Linnzeus thought it proper, when he described Prunus domes- 
tica,* to divide it into fourteen botanical varieties. It is alto- 
gether probable that’ differences have increased rather than 
diminished since then; but, in this country at least, we recog- 
nize no botanical varieties at all for this species. What has 
become of them? It would be interesting to know. 
In 1 789 Ehrhart? separated a single one of these varieties 
to make his species Prunus cerasifera,3 a species which is gener- 
ally understood and accepted in this country. Seringe in pre- 
senting this group in the second volume of the Prodromus 
(1825) did not accept Ehrhart’s species, but retained the varietal 
*Sp. Pl. 475. 1753. [1st ed.] 
* Beitrige zur Naturkunde 4:17. 1689. 
‘ : Prunus cerasifera Ehth. = P. Myrobalana (Linn.) Lois. 
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