88 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



ing to Mr. F. N. Meyer/ looks in tree like the peach-parent but the fruit 

 is more like that of the almond-parent. The fruit of the hybrid is inedible 

 but the plant is a handsome ornamental. Mr. Mijurin states that while 

 neither of the two parents will hybridize with the common peach, this 

 hybrid does. Prunus davidiana, then, like the Sand Cherry of the Western 

 Plains, may prove to be a valuable go-between in hybridizing species of 

 Prunus. 



The fruit has no comestible value. It is small, less than an inch 

 in diameter, nearly round, very downy, yellow at mattirity, with thin, 

 dry, tasteless flesh which parts readily from the stone even before fully 

 ripe. As if to complete its worthlessness as an edible product, it begins 

 to shrivel as maturity approaches and soon decays. In fruit, even more 

 than in tree, it is an intermediate between the peach and the almond. 



A word must be said as to the merits of Prunus davidiana as an orna- 

 mental. It is the first harbinger of spring in the great family to which it 

 belongs, bursting into a profusion of white or pinkish flowers with the 

 approach of warm weather even before forsythias are in flower. Its thickly 

 set, erect branchlets are wands of pinkish-white two feet in length, making 

 a handsome tree and furnishing beautiful cut-flowers. If grown for its 

 flowers, however, one must be content in northern climates to have it in 

 bloom only about one season out of three but even so it repays culture. 

 The Chinese cultivate dwarf specimens, possibly a dwarf form, for winter- 

 flowering and the plant, it would seem, would readily lend itself to winter- 

 forcing in American floriculture. The tree, quite aside from its flowers, 

 is handsome at all times. A form with pure white flowers is a very desirable 

 ornamental.^ On the Station grounds this white-flowering peach has a 

 fastigiate habit of growth and resembles somewhat a small Lombardy 

 poplar. 



PRUNUS MIRA Koehne. 

 P. mira Koehne Plant. Wilson. Pt. 2, No. 4:272. 1912. 



Tree thirty feet in height; trunk sixteen inches in diameter; branches very smooth, 

 those of the current year's growth green, the older ones dark reddish-yellow; flowering- 

 season short ; stipules lacking or obscure ; petioles five-sixteenths to ten-sixteenths of an inch 

 long, with from two to four glands toward the apex, the glands broadly elliptical, disc- 

 shaped; leaf at the base usually roundly lanceolate, two to four inches long, nine-sixteenths 

 to one and one-sixteenth inches broad, gradually narrowing toward the apex; margin 



• U. S. D. A. Plant Immigrants No. 72:516. 1912. 



2 Prunus Davidiana alba Bean Garden 50:165. 1896; Persica Davidiana alba Carridre i?eti. Hort. 

 76. 1872; Prunus Davidiana flare alba Wittmack Gartenfl. 44:129. 1895. 



