99 
Poplar, but differing in leaf. 1 
Plumb Tree, feveral kinds, bearing fome long, round, 
white, yellow, red, and black Plums; all differing in their 
Fruit from thofe in England? 
Wild Purcelane? 
Wood-wax, wherewith they dye many pretty Colours. 4 
species are peculiar to this continent. — See the author's Voyages, p. 69, for an- 
other mention of the birches. 
1 Pofulus, L. Our species are peculiar to the country, as the author's remark 
suggests. Wood (/. c.) notices "the ever-trembling asps." 
2 "The plumbs of the country be better for plumbs than the cherries be for 
cherries. They be black and yellow ; about the bigness of damsons ; of a reason- 
able good taste." — New-Eng. Prosped, chap. v. Prunus maritime, Wangenh. 
(beech-plum), and P. Americana, Marsh, (wild yellow plum), are no doubt here 
intended; as also, it is likely, by Josselyn, who, it is evident, in this place had 
only the genus in mind as " common with us in England." — See p. 61 for the 
author's mention of the "wild cherry." 
8 Portulaca oleracea, L. (Gerard, p. 521). "In cornfields. It is eaten as a 
pot-herb, and esteemed by some as little inferior to asparagus." — Cutler; Ac- 
count of Indigenous Vegetables (1785), /. c, p. 447. Considered to have been 
introduced here; but our author enables us to carry back the date of its introduc- 
tion, without reasonable doubt, to the first settlement of the country. " Purslain, 
Mr. Glover says, is also very common in Virginia, and troublesome too, to the 
tobacco-planters." Sir Philip Skippon to Ray, Feb. II, 1675-6, in Ray Society's 
Corresp. of John Ray, p. 121. Mr. Nuttall regarded the species as indigenous on 
the plains of the Missouri; but this plant, " too closely resembling the common 
purslane," according to Prof. Gray (Man., p. 64), has been separated as specifi- 
cally distinct by Dr. Engelmann. 
4 Genista timSoria, L. (Genistella tindoria, — greenweed, or dyers' weed; 
Gerard, p. 1316). "We shall not need to speake of the use that diers make 
thereof," says the latter. Our author could hardly have been mistaken about so 
well-known a plant as this; which he probably met with in one of his visits to 
the neighborhood of Boston, — long the only American station for it. There is a 
tradition that it was introduced here by Gov. Endicott; which may have been 
some forty years before Josselyn finished his herborizing, — enough to account for 
its naturalization then. It was long confined to Salem (" pastures between New 
Mills and Salem," — Cutler, I. c, 1785); but occurred to me sparingh', in 1841, 
on the shores of Cambridge Bay, and also on roadsides in Old Cambridge. 
" Woad-seed" is set down, in a memorandum of the Governor and Company of 
