NATIVE AMERICAN SPECIES OF PRUNUS. 3 
that region having foliage at all comparable with that of the damson 
plum. The fruit could not have been much more than formed at 
the time and, in fact, no mention is made of it. 
A few years later, in 1534, Jacques Cartier (43, p. 17; 68, p. 31) 
observed some time during the month of July what was probably 
the fruit of Prunus nigra. ‘They have also plums, which they dry 
as we do for the winter; they call them Honesta.”’ The fruit even of 
this species must have been brought some distance, for it is not 
known to occur far below the vicinity of Montreal, and no other in 
that region has fruit large enough to be dried in the manner described. 
On his second voyage (43, p. 35), plums were again observed by Car- 
- tier in the vicinity of an island which the explorers named Isle de 
Bacchus, and which is now known as the Isle of Orleans. 
The account of Roberval’s voyage (29, p. 294) in 1542 also mentions 
plums, as follows: 
And in all these Countreys there are okes, and bortz, ashes, elmes, arables, trees 
of life, pines, prussetrees, ceders, great wall nut trees, and wilde nuts, hasel-trees, 
wilde peare trees, wilde grapes, and there have bene found redde plummes. 
Another explorer, De Soto (16, p. 48, 61), landed in Florida on 
May 30, 1539, and the narrator relates that on October 27 they came 
to Anaica Apalache, which was probably not far from the present 
site of Tallahassee, Fla., and says: 
There were other towns, where was great store of maiz, pompions, french beanes, 
and plummes of the countrie, which are better than those of Spaine, and they grow 
in the fields without planting. * * * There met him on the way [to Canasagua] 
_ twenty Indians, every one loaden with a basket ful of mulberries: for there be many, 
and those very good, from Cutifa-Chiqui thither, and so forward in other provinces, 
_ and also nuts and plummes. And the trees grow in the fields without planting or 
dressing them, and are as big and as rancke as though they grew in gardens digged and 
_. watered. 
The first-mentioned trees, those seen in the autumn of 1539, 
may have been Prunus americana, since that species occurs in the 
locality specified, and in that section is the latest one to ripen its 
- fruit. ‘The second reference is perhaps to P. angustifolia, as the fruit 
ripens at the time mentioned, which was about the first of June, 1540. 
At Cog¢a, or Coosa, about July 26, 1540, the author writes (16, p. 68): 
_ There were in the fields many plum trees, as well as of such as grow in Spaine, as of 
thecountrie * * *, 
 Cutifa-Chiqua appears to have been on the Savannah River below 
_ Augusta, Canasagua on the northern boundary of Georgia, and Coosa 
_ is supposed to be the locality now represented by Old Coosa on the 
_ Coosa River, in Georgia. 
_ Plums are again mentioned as having been observed, probably in 
_ dune, 1541, at the Indian town ‘“‘Casqui’’ (16, p. 94). This locality 
: was west of the Mississippi, but commentators differ as to its location. 
