THE PLUMS OF NEW YORK. 6 1 



Under cultivation the range is even greater than for the wild plant. 

 It is only in localities of extreme heat and cold, humidity or aridness, 

 that some of the many Americanas cannot be made to grow under conditions 

 at all favorable for orchards of any of the temperate fruits. So, too, vari- 

 eties may be found for nearly aU soils which permit of cultivation. This 

 freedom from local attachments is one of the chief assets of the species. 



The Americana tree is commonly small, often but a bush, and usually 

 with a thick, thorny top. Generally the head attains a height of about 

 fifteen or eighteen feet and sometimes it rises to twenty -five or thirty feet, 

 spreading into many rigid branches which are often pendulous at the ex- 

 tremities. The species may almost always be told by the rough, shaggy, 

 • grayish bark, the large, thin, persistent plates of which give a very char- 

 acteristic shagginess. In the spring the tree is covered with umbelliferous 

 masses of pure white flowers and both at this season and later with its 

 ample foliage or showy frtiit, the plant is very ornamental. The leaves 

 are large, oval or obovate, thin, dull and veiny, with very jagged margins. 



The fruit is reddish or yellowish or a blending of the two with the 

 red varieties predominating. Often the color is more nearly orange than 

 red or yellow — in fact pure yellow fruits cannot be found. Wild or cul- 

 tivated the fruits of the Americana plums vary greatly in season, size, shape 

 and flavor. In the orchard the period of maturity covers a range of several 

 weeks, beginning in New York in August and ending in October; in the 

 wildj trees in the same thicket may vary as much as three weeks in ripening 

 their fruit. The size of the cultivated sorts is from that of a Damson to 

 that of some of the Gages, the shape being roimdish-oval, or quite oval, 

 sometimes oblique and sometimes truncate at one or both ends and often 

 more or less compressed. The wild fruits usually have a pleasant flavor 

 and this is much improved tmder cultivation so that when fully ripe the 

 flesh of some sorts is sweet and luscious, hardly surpassed, if the skin be 

 rejected, by the best Domesticas. The skin is usually thick, coriaceous, 

 acerb or astringent, and altogether very unpleasant, making with the 

 tenaciously clinging stones the chief defects of these fruits. In some 

 varieties skin and stones are far less objectionable than in others. 



The trees of the varieties we have as yet are not very manageable 

 in the orchard. They make a very slow growth and are hard to control, 

 producing at maturity many leaning trunks which are often crooked, as 

 are also the branches which, with the unkempt heads, give an impression 

 of waywardness and wildness. Nearly all of the varieties over-bear and 



