20 
WILD PLUM. 
P. hiemalis. Elliott, Sic., vol. 1. p. 542. 
Cerasus nigra, ( Loisel .) Seringe in Decand. Prodr., vol. 2. p. 
538. Hook. Flor. Bor. Amer., vol. 1. p. 167. 
Few plants in North America have a more extensive 
range than this species of Plum: it is met with from the 
Saskatchewan towards Hudson’s Bay, and through all 
the intermediate country to Georgia, Louisiana, and 
Texas. In the western part of the State of New York 
it is very common, and, in some instances, (as it ap- 
peared to me in 1810,) it has been cultivated by the 
aborigines around their dwellings in the same manner 
as the Chickasaw Plum. When truly wild, it seems to 
affect the banks of streams and rich bottom lands. In 
New Jersey, near Franklin furnace, (Sussex county,) I 
have observed trees 20 to 30 feet high, and with trunks 
from 6 to 14 inches in diameter. The ordinary height, 
however, is from 15 to 20 feet. The wood is hard and 
of a reddish colour, like that of the Wild Cherry, 
(Prunus serotina .) The fruit, when mature, which is in 
the month of August, is from I an inch to an inch in 
diameter, in some instances almost wholly yellow, but 
commonly vermilion red on one side, wholly red, or a 
mixture of both colours, and in all the varieties covered 
more or less with a very evident bloom. When ripe it 
contains a very sweet thin pulp, with the disadvantage 
however of having a thick bitterish acerb skin, but by 
cultivation it is considerably improved, and the fruit is 
sometimes, as Dr. Darlington remarks, as large as a 
common Apricot. In Upper Canada, where it was 
formerly cultivated, I have seen as many as twelve dis- 
tinct varieties in the same orchard. It is also free from 
the attacks of the insects which have proved so fatal 
to nearly all the cultivated Plums. 
The stem spreads out into a roundish head, with 
many rigid and somewhat thorny branches. The leaves 
