NATIVE AMERICAN SPECIES OF PRUNUS. Hy) 
and rudely cared for. The manuscript account by Conover (31, 
p- 58) of Sullivan’s expedition indicates that when the village of 
Kanadasaga was destroyed, orchards of apples and plums were 
found crudely cultivated. William Bartram (8, p. 38) also refers 
to the cultivation of plums, although in a less convincing manner, 
as follows: 
I observed, in the ancient cultivated fields, 1. diospyros, 2. gleditsia triacanthos, 
3. prunus chicasaw, 4. callicarpa, 5. morus rubra, 6. juglans exaltata, 7. juglans 
nigra, which inform us, that these trees were cultivated by the ancients, on account 
of their fruit, as being qinalesonns and nourishing food. 
These observations seem to have been made in the sae: of 
Wrightsboro, eastern Georgia. 
Again, in northwestern South Carolina, not far from Keowee 
(8, p. 331), “appeared the remains of a town of the ancients, as 
the tumuli, terraces, posts or pillars, old Peach and Plumb orchards, 
&c., sufficiently testify.” 
At the ancient town of Sticoe (8, p. 343), Bartram again says, 
“here were also old peach and plum orchards; some of the trees 
appeared yet thriving and fruitful.” 
Tn all these instances in which plums are mentioned as being found 
in orchards, they were either with trees introduced by Europeans 
or were near settlements of Europeans. Earlier authors appear to~ 
have found groves of plums about Indian villages, but say nothing to 
indicate that the trees or seeds were intentionally planted or cared 
for, and perhaps this was not done until the coming of the white 
man. The Indian villages may have been established in proxim- 
ity to plum groves, or these may have sprung from seed thrown 
_ away after the fruit had been brought for use from other localities. 
EARLY BOTANICAL DESCRIPTIONS. 
The first species to receive a botanical description was probably 
Prunus americana, for it is apparently this species which Plukenet 
(61, p. 306) describes as “‘ Prunus sylvestris Virginiana fructu luteo 
rubente rotundo, ossiculo lato & compresso,” and which he figures 
in his Phytographia, tome 216, as figure 7. The leaves are figured 
with acute serrations and are about the form of those of Prunus 
americana, while the description of the fruit and stone also accords 
well enough with this species. 
In 1739, a little more than 40 years afterwards, two species were 
included in Clayton’s Flora Virginica (28, p. 54), ‘“‘ Prunus sylvestris 
humilior, fructu rubro praecociori & minori, radice reptatrice,” and 
“Prunus sylvestris, fructu majore rubente.”’ Although Linnzus 
is credited with the authorship of Clayton’s Flora, these species are 
not included in the Species Plantarum. It is difficult to say whether 
Clayton’s descriptions really represent more than one species or, 
