CERASUS, CHERRY TREE. 157 



when they're extremely ripe. But this color is restricted to the skin and doesn't extend to 

 the flesh, the juice, & the pit. 



The flesh is dry and there's very little of it. 



The juice is acrid & becomes tasteless when the fruit is extremely ripe. 



The pit is oval, large in proportion to the size of the fruit, and it clings firmly to 

 the flesh. 



This small fruit, left strictly for the birds, ripens around the end of June. It's so 

 light that it hangs down much less than other fruits in the same group. 



Since the wild cherry tree is propagated & grows from pits everywhere in the 

 wild, there are many varieties of it, all about equally objectionable when it comes to their 

 fruit. It's cultivated in nurseries to generate stocks on which all kinds of cherry trees can 

 be grafted. Grafts separate easily from the small black fruit variety. 



II. Larger wild CHERRY TREE, fully flowered 



Larger wild CHERRY TREE, and also with multiple flowers. H.R.P. 



Double-flowered WILD CHERRY TREE. 



THIS WILD CHERRY TREE is no different from the preceding one in habit & 

 foliage. But it doesn't get as large. Its shoots are shorter & more full of buds. The flowers 

 are from nine to eighteen lignes in diameter. They consist of about forty petals arranged 

 like a rose, about thirty stamens, & a prodigious pistil formed by two small, reflexed 

 leaves that clasp one another. This tree, a marvel and one of the chief wonders of spring, 

 blooms at the end of April or at the beginning of May. Since it produces no fruit at all. I 

 won't describe it any further. 



