SpirtBa.l ROSACEA. 147 



Tribe II. Spireje. 



" Fruit formed of several follicles. Seeds 1 — 6, suspended from 

 the inner edges of the follicles. Calyx persistent." — Bab. Man. 



II. Spir^a, Linn. Dropwort. 



GaVyx inferior, equally 5-cleft, persistent. Petals 5, roundish. 

 Follicles 3 — 12, usually distinct, 1-celled, 2-valved, with few seeds. 



1. S. Filipendula, L. Common Dropwort. " Herbaceous, 

 leaves interruptedly pinnated, all the leaflets uniform deeply cut 



too many of regarding all the cultivated cherries as originating from one species, 

 since in that state it has been found difficult to draw an exact line of demarca- 

 tion between the best-marked varieties ; as also the bad practice, so prevalent on 

 the continent, of introducing cultivated fruit-trees into general and local Floras, 

 and of endeavouring to establish specific characters on horticultural races or per- 

 manent varieties. 



There seems good reason for supposing P. Cerasus to be as truly indigenous to 

 Europe as P. avium, but being much more limited in its range than the latter, 

 and lar more local in its habitats, it is rarely brought under the notice of observers 

 in its genuine natii e state ; the majority know it only in its multitudinous phases 

 as the Morello Cherry of the garden and orchard, in which condition it is com- 

 monly forced to amalgamate with its congener by the operations of budding or 

 grafting. From this cause, and from the changes which cultivation induces in 

 all vegetables long submitted to its influence, numerous varieties of the Cherry 

 have arisen which it is difficult to refer to their primitive types, intermediate, as 

 many of them are, between the two original stocks, whilst the features of the rest 

 are obscured or obliterated by centuries of domestication. 



Though Prunus Cerasus appears to be distributed over a considerable part of 

 central and southern Europe, it would seem not to be of general occurrence 

 within these limits, and it is perhaps often passed by for a dwarf variety of P. 

 avium, which on a hasty view it certainly pretty closely resembles. Guided in all 

 likelihood by the name, and the traditional introduction of the Cherry (in its 

 improved cultivated forms) into Europe by LucuUus, authors have in general 

 agreed in assigning to this tree an Asiatic origin, and the writer of the article 

 " Cerasus " in Loudon's ' Arboretum Britannicum ' says that it is never found in a 

 truly wild state in Europe, and that the aboriginal form is iraknown, a direct con- 

 tradiction of the view just before taken by the same writer, seeing that he holds 

 both P. Cerasus and P. avium to be only varied fonns of one species, but allows 

 the latter to be indigenous to our quarter of the globe, and very distinct in its 

 native habitats ; it must therefore be that primitive form or type from which the 

 first is a derivative. 



The fact is, that in this island and elsewhere, both in our own country and on 

 the continent, Prunus Cerasus grows in places remote enough from habitations, 

 though we do not deny it is occasionally found escaped from cultivation, as indeed 

 a truly indigenous plant would be peculiarly prone to do. As it naturally affects 

 free, open, sunny situations, it has less perhaps the appearance of an aboriginal 

 than P. avium, being seldom found, like that, in the interior of woods, where there 

 is not a free circulation of air. 



The figures referred to in ' English Botany ' well express the characters and 

 difference of colouring which distinguish our two native Cherries. The separa- 

 tion of Prunus and Cerasus as genera is unnatural, because certain species, as P. 

 Mahaleh for example, unite the habit and structure of these sectional divisions. 



