193 PEACTICAL FOEESTRT. 



fruits, the Plum, Cherry, Sloe, Cherry-laurel, Peach, Nectarine, 

 Apricot, etc. * There are about twenty species indigenous to 

 North America, mostly trees or shrubs, with deciduous, alter- 

 nate leaves. Flowers composed of a campanulate or turbinate, 

 livecleft calyx, deciduous. Petals five, spreading, usually 

 white or but slightly colored, 



Prnniis Americana, Marshall. — ^Wild Plum. — ^Leaves ovate, or 

 somewhat obovate, pointed, coarsely or doubly serrate, quite 

 smooth. Fruit i-oundish, oval, yellow or red, one half to an 

 inch in diameter, having a flattened stone with broad margins. 

 Fruit is quite variable in flavor, sometimes pleasant, but with 

 a tough, rather bitter skin. There are a large number of im- 

 proved cultivated varieties of this species. A small, thorny tree, 

 seldom over twenty feet high. Wood of a reddish color, and 

 quite hard. Common in low, moist soUs, from British Amer- 

 ica to Florida, and westward to the Rocky Mountains. 



P. Andersoni, Gray. — Anderson Cherry. — A low shrub, only 

 two or three feet high, with solitary, rose-colored flowers, a 

 half inch broad, fruit small, and thin fleshed, with stone com- 

 pressed, shai-ply angled on one side, and furrowed on the other, 

 resembUug a small peach stone. In foot hiUs of Northwestern 

 Nevada. 



P. Caroliniana, Ait. — Mock Orange, Cherry-Laurel. — ^Leaves 

 thick and leathery, evergreen, smooth and glossy, ovate-lance- 

 olate, acute, mostly entire. Flowers in short racemes, white. 

 Fruit ovoid, soon becoming dry and black, stone round. A 

 tree sometimes thirty or forty feet high. Wood reddish, fine- 

 grained, but brittle. North CaroUna south, and westward to 

 Texas. 



P. Chicasa, Michx.— Chickasaw Plum.— Leaves thin, lanceo- 

 late, or oblong-lanceolate, sharp-pointed, smooth, and minutely 

 serrate, with teeth incurved. Flowers on short stalks. Fruit 

 round, yellowish-red, of an agreeable flavor. Several improved 

 varieties are in cultivation. A thorny shrub or small tree, 

 seldom over fifteen feet high. Native habitat not positively 

 identified, but has become naturalized in old fields and thickets 

 in both the Eastern and Western States, as well as in the 

 Southern, where it is supposed to be indigenous. 



P. dcmissa, Walpei-s.— Wild Cheny.— Leaves ovate, or oblong- 

 ovate, usually broadest above the middle, abruptly pointed, 

 rounded or heart-shaped at base. Flowers white, in terminal 



