December 22, 1897. J 



Garden and Forest. 



5°3 



New or Little-known Plants. 



Primus Davidiana. 



NUMEROUS references have been made in the columns 

 of this journal to the beauty of Prunus Davidiana as 

 a flowering plant. It is a small bushy tree, discovered 



the tree and its flower-buds are very hardy, the flowers are 

 occasionally killed by late frosts. Prunus Davidiana has 

 fruited in Paris, and more freely in the south of France, but 

 in this country it has not, so far as we have heard, pro- 

 duced any of its small thin-fleshed fruits, which have no 

 comestible value. The pale pink and white flowers, how- 

 ever, are lovely enough to compensate for the want of fruit 



Fig. 64. — Prunus Davidiana. 



about thirty years ago by the Abbe David, who found it in 

 the neighborhood of Pekin and also near Gehol, the summer 

 residence of the Emperor of China. Botanically interesting 

 as being somewhat intermediate in character between the 

 Peach and the Plum, Prunus Davidiana is the earliest of all 

 the Peach-like trees to flower in this climate, and, although 



and make this one of the most desirable of small early- 

 flowering trees. 



Our illustration on this page, made from a photo- 

 graph for which we are indebted to Mr. James M. 

 Codman, of Brookline, Massachusetts, shows a bunch of 

 flowering branches of this tree from the Arnold Arboretum. 



