XXVIII. 3. THE JUNE BERRY. 443 
A genus of three or four species, two of them European, and 
one, with very numerous and marked varieties, American. 
THe Saap Buso. Swamp Pyrus. A. Canadénsis. Torrey 
and Gray. 
Figured in Audubon’s Birds, I, Plate 60. 
There are two remarkably distinct varieties of this species 
found in Massachusetts. Both are called the Shad Bush, from 
flowering when the shad begin to ascend the streams. The 
first is also called 
The June Berry. A. botrydpium. This is a small, graceful 
tree, from fifteen to twenty-five, sometimes thirty feet high, with 
a few, slender, distant branches, usually growing in upland 
woods. ‘The bark is of a reddish green; that of the branches 
and stems, of a rich purplish brown, and very smooth. The 
leaves are twovor three inches long and rather more than half 
that breadth, oval, varying from ovate to elliptic and obovate, 
sharply and finely serrate, usually somewhat cordate at base, 
and abruptly acuminate, smooth on both surfaces or scattered 
with a few silken hairs, when just expanded, afterwards smooth, 
purple when young, paler beneath. Petioles one fourth or one 
fifth the length of the leaves. Stipules very slender, lanceolate, 
invested with silky hairs, purple or faint crimson, falling off 
with the investing scales of the buds. Outer scales roundish, 
concave; inner, lanceolate, silky; all, crimson or purple, smooth 
without, silky-villose within. Flowers large, in spreading, often 
somewhat pendulous racemes, of from 4 to 8, on the ends of 
the branches, expanding in April or May, just as the leaves are 
beginning to open, with small, purple or faint crimson bracts at 
the base of the partial flower-stalks and often near the flowers. 
Segments of the calyx acuminate, edged and lined with silky 
down. Petals white, linear-lanceolate, narrowed at base, three 
times as long as the calyx. Fruit pear-shaped, purplish, very 
sweet and pleasant, ripening in June, earlier than any other 
fruit, and much sought for by birds. 
The union of the crimson or purple of the scales and stipules, 
with the pure white of the flowers, and the glossy, silken, scat- 
