322 TREES OF MINNESOTA. 
are expected to grow the following spring. If planted in the 
autumn as soon as separated from the pulp about two-thirds 
of the seeds will grow the following spring and the remainder 
the second year. It may also be grown from sprouts and roots 
cuttings. 
Properties of wood.—Heavy, hard, close grained and strong 
It is dark brown in color, with a thin light-colored sapwoed. 
and takes a good polish. Specific gravity 0.7313; weight of a 
cubic foot 46.95 pounds. 
Uses —The Wild Plum is pretty in flower and in fruit, and 
is a good hardy ornamental tree, as well as a good fruit tree. 
The fruit of the wild kinds is readily sold, and is much used 
for culinary purposes, and many of the cultivated kinds afford 
excellent table fruits. This is one of the best undershrubs that 
can be put in our prairie groves, where it affords protection to 
the soil from evaporation and at the same time yields desirable 
though of course inferior fruit under such conditions. 
Prunus pennsylvanica. Wild Red Cherry. Bird 
Cherry. Pigeon Cherry, Pin Cherry. 
Leaves oblong-lanceolate, long pointed, finely and sharply 
serrate, with incurved teeth often tipped with minute glands, 
thin, shining, green and smooth on both sides. Fruit ripens 
in July or August, a very small, bright red drupe with thin sour 
flesh and smooth oblong stone that is ridged on the ventral 
margin. A small, handsome tree that seldom reaches a height 
of forty feet, and is often a mere shrub. It has smooth, red- 
dish-brown, bark, which peels off in transverse strips around 
the tree. 
Distribution —Found in moist, rather rich soil from New- 
foundland west to the eastern slopes of the Coast Range and 
south to northern Illinois and Pennsylvania; also in North 
Carolina, Tennessee and Colorado. In Minnesota common 
throughout all but the southwestern part of the state, where it 
rarely occurs. 
Propagation.—Grown from seeds, which should be stratified 
and sown in the spring or sown in autumn. They are dis- 
tributed by robins, wax-wings and other birds that eat largely 
of the fruit. The Wild Red Cherry has thus become a very 
common tree in waste places, although not so common in our 
