PRU'NUS SPINO'SA. 
Var. Pleno. 
THE SLOE THORN. 
Class. 
ICOSANDRIA. 
Order. 
MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order. 
ROSACEA. 
Native of 
Height. 
Flowers in 
Habit. 
Inhabits 
Europe. 
20 feet. 
March. 
Shrub. 
Hedges. 
No. 1134. 
The word Pruniis, it is believed, is derived from 
the Asiatic proumnos, the name of the wild plum. 
Here we have a shrub of much beauty; wild 
and spinous, yet flowering in splendor; every 
blossom being a miniature rose of snowy whiteness; 
a barren thorn it may be said, yet own brother to 
the Green Gage Plum as well as the Sloe. Culti- 
vation has produced the change, as it has made 
the philosopher out of the savage. It has been 
well observed by Loudon, in his Arboretum, in 
allusion to hybrid and other cultivated plants, that 
“It must not be forgotten that almost all the culti- 
vated plants, of most value to man, have been 
produced by some kind of artificial process. Ex- 
periments of this kind, therefore, ought never to be 
discouraged. What cultivation has done, we know, 
but what it may yet accomplish, is concealed in the 
womb of time.” 
This double-flowering form of Prunus is by no 
means common in cultivation, although so hardy 
and showy. It is but a variety of the single-flower- 
ed Sloe Thorn, which is so frequently met with 
in hedges and copses, not alone in England, but 
