452 WOODY PLANTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 
is very abundant. Trunk erect, covered with the greenish, 
brown, polished, membranaceous bark, characteristic of the 
cherry, with ferruginous, swelling dots. New shoots and spray 
very slender, with bark of a lighter, reddish brown. Leaves 
numerous, alternate or in pairs, rarely threes, at the end of the 
branchlets, on short, small petioles, which are channelled above; 
narrow, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, with fine, rounded, glan- 
dular serratures, acuminate, almost folded together, and nod- 
ding at the end, of nearly the same light green above and be- 
neath; texture, thin and delicate; secondary nerves numerous, 
parallel; veins finely reticulate. Flowers rather large, in nearly 
sessile umbels. Segments of the calyx thin, rounded at the 
end, turned back. Petals white, broad, inversely egg-shaped. 
Fruit reddish, in very short corymbs of from 2 to 5, taking the 
place of the leaves at the end of last year’s shoots, or in the 
axils of leaves on peduncles one inch long; with little flesh, 
very sour, and with a large stone. The fruit 1s not abundant, 
but occasionally a few branches are found completcly loaded 
with it. 
The wood is hard, close-grained, and of a reddish color, much 
resembling that of the common wild cherry; but as the trees 
are not often more than five or six inches in diameter, 1 know 
not that it would be of any considerable use. As it grows in 
the most exposed situations, it might probably grow readily, if 
sown or planted. In some parts of Maine and New Hamp- 
shire, this tree springs up abundantly on soil which has been 
recently laid open to the sun in clearing, and especially after it 
has been burnt over. There isa common opinion among the 
ignorant, that it springs up, without seed, in consequence of 
some action of heat upon the soil. If they would take the 
pains to examine, they would, however, find great quantities 
of the nuts or stones, as they are called, just beneath the surface 
of the ground. In climbing the wild hills of those States, I 
have repeatedly observed, in the beds of the streams, often the 
most practicable paths, surprising numbers of the nuts of this 
cherry, though there were no trees of the kind within a great 
distance. 
This tree is found, according to Hooker, throughout Canada, 
