PrtmUS.] ROSACE,E. 



143 



Dan. X. t. 1647 (cum priore var. fructu nigro). Loud. Arh. Brit. 

 ii. 693 (Cer. sylvestris). 



a. Fruit red. 



/3. Fruit black. 



Extremely common and often very abundant in woods, thickets, hedges and 

 copses over the greater part of the island. Fl. April, May. Fr. J uly. Tp . 



E. Med.~ln Quarr copse, about St. John's, and elsewhere near Ryde, frequent, 

 but seldom very large. Common in woods about Cowes. Abundant at Bord- 

 wood. In the Parsonage Lynch and elsewhere about Newchurch, Kerne and 

 Apse. Near Pidford, plentifully. Many trees of large size are found in Knigh- 

 ton West copse, near Shanklin church. Barton farm, near Landguavd, &c., mostly 

 if not always with a small, red, acid, and very bitter scarcely eatable fruit. Apse 

 Castle. About America. In Park copse and elsewhere about Cliff farm, ^com- 

 mou. Under Cook's Castle, in plenty. In Cheverton copse, a little S.S.W. of 

 Lee farm. Abundant in thickets about Park farm, Appuldurcombe. Most abun- 

 dantly in a copse near to Hilliard's, between Lake and Shanklin. 



W. Med.— Tu\t Copse, and about Hill farm, Gatcombe, in coppices. About 

 Marvel Wood. Snowdrop Lane, near Gatcombe. Swainston park. 



ji. A tree or two of the Black Merry grows in Bordwood copse, producing a 

 small tolerably well tasting fruit, slightly bitter, but without acidity. At Fox- 

 holes, near Lower Knighton, a single tree, Mr. Williams. 



A tree, often of a timber-like size, from 20 to 40 feet or even double that height, 

 rising, when allowed to acquire its natural dimensions, with a single clean trunk, 

 from 1 to 3 feet in diameter, straight, and covered with a smooth bark, the epider- 

 mis of which is of a reddish gray striped or mottled with whitish ash, and from the 

 transverse direction of its fibres, which lie at right angles to those of the true bark, 

 appearing annulated or ring-streaked ; in very old trees becoming rough and 

 fissured. Branches spreading or divaricate, long, straight and flexile, in the 

 younger trees somewhat verticillate, the whole forming a rounded, fastigiate or 

 conical head. Root creeping, scarcely if at all sending up suckers at the crown,* 

 as is so notably the case in the next species. Leaves beginniag to expand just 

 before the blossoms, and like them growing in sessile clusters, partly on the main 

 branch, partly on short lateral spurs or abortive twigs, 6 to 8 or more in a cluster, 

 from the bosom of the deciduous leaf-buds, the inner scales of which are subfoli- 

 aceous, greenish, often 3-cleft, spreading and partly reflexed, hairy within and 

 very glutinous ; the outer short, brownish, concave, imbricated, smooth and chaffy: 

 when young the leaves are folded together, of a tender lucid green more or less 

 tinged with reddish brown, drooping or pendulous, a position they retain ever 

 after in various degrees ; when fully grown from about 3^ to 6 inches long, and 

 il'om 2 to 3 inches wide, varying in shape from ovale to obovato-oblong or 

 oblongo-elliptical, cuspidato-acuminate, rounded, cuneately attenuate or subtrun- 

 cate at base, coarsely, deeply and unequally doubly inciso-serrate ; serratures 

 rounded or obtuse, obliquely tipped with a small pale red pellucid gland, termi- 

 nating the median nerve, of which glands there is also a trace in the form of red- 

 dish points in the angles of the serratures on the under side of the leaf, which in 

 all stages of growth is beset, principally about the midrib and lateral nervures. 



* Mr. Borrer has shown me that the root is certainly creeping, and that the 

 tree is propagated partly by that means, but there is unquestionably not the same 

 disposition to throw up copious suckers close around theprimary stem as in the Morello 

 Cherry. In such young trees as I have caused to be dug up, I find the root to be 

 composed of numerous long, stout, branched fibres, spreading nearly horizontally 

 from the bottom of a single stem, or descending more or less obliquely, scarcely 

 one having a vertical direction ; and in no instance have I yet seen any disposi- 

 tion to throw out suckers, either at the root, crown, or at any distance betwixt 

 that and the extremity of the fibres, from whence alone I presume fresh plants to 

 be in general produced. 



