67 



l8, 1910, I came across several specimens of the same plant on 

 somewhat similar high sandy hills about 35 miles farther south, 

 near Haines City, Polk County, but was again too late for 

 fruit. 



This peculiar little Prunus seems to have its nearest relative — 

 in the eastern United States at least — in P. angustifolia Marsh. 

 (P. Chicasa Mx.), a large shrub or small tree whose favorite 

 habitat is old fields and fence-rows in regions where agriculture 

 has been practiced for a generation or two at least. The native 

 home of P. angustifolia, if it has any, is not definitely known, but 

 is supposed to be somewhere west of the Mississippi River.* 

 The new species differs from P. angustifolia in being much 

 smaller in almost every way except its fruit, in its diffuse 

 habit and crooked branches, its short pedicels, and especially in 

 being confined to a very limited area of very poor soil, which 

 may not be cultivated for several decades to come. 



The description given above, although incomplete in several 

 particulars, and not arranged in conventional order, will be 

 amply sufificient to enable any one to recognize the plant in the 

 field. Several more seasons may elapse before I have a chance 

 to collect flowers and ripe fruit, and it seems best to give the 

 plant a name without further delay, so that it can be mentioned 

 in descriptions of Florida vegetation. I therefore propose to 

 call it Prunus geniculata. Specimens collected at the time and 

 place above mentioned have been distributed as no. 31 of my 

 Florida plants, and have been pronounced undescribed by all 

 systematists who have examined them. 



I have recently been informed that there is in the Gray Her- 

 barium a flowering specimen of the same species, collected in 

 March, 1889, by Otto Vesterlund near Killarney, which is on 

 the southwest side of Lake Apopka, where the Tavares & Gulf 

 R. R. crosses the "Orange Belt" division of the Atlantic Coast 

 Line, a few miles southeast of West Apopka. 



*For notes on its supposed origin, present habitat, etc., see Michaux, Fl. Bor. 

 •Am. i: 284-285. 1803; Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept. 332. 1814; Nuttall, Genera i: 

 302. 1818; Elliott, Bot. S. C. & Ga. i: 542. 1821; Sargent, Tenth Census U. 

 S. 9: 66. 1884; Silva N. A. 4: 25-26. 1892; Mohr, Contr. U. S. Nat. Herb. 6: 

 551. 1901; Harper, Ann. N.Y.Acad. Sci. 17: 115, 228. 1906; Bull. Torrey 

 Club 35: 350. 1908. 



