DECIDUOUS TREES. 
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sprung from these parents. Our native wild cherry, with black 
fruit, is the Cerasus virginiana. 
There is no fruit-bearing tree so essential to a suburban home 
as the cherry-tree. Climbing into its branches to eat cherries is 
one of the pleasantest of June enjoyments for young or old. Half 
the pleasure of eating cherries is in plucking them where they 
hang. Some large fruits may be bought more economically than 
they can be raised on suburban lots, but cherries are emphatically 
the fruit-trees of village homes. 
The number of varieties in cultivation for their fruit are listed 
by hundreds in the nursery catalogues. We shall attempt no 
enumeration of these, but simply give the names of a few standard 
sorts, and describe more fully only such as are particularly known 
as ornamental trees. 
The following varieties, ripening pretty nearly in the order 
named, are among the best for fruit : Baumann’s May, a rank up- 
right grower, forming a conical tree ; the early purple Guigne, a 
globular tree with small and numerous branches j Knight’s early 
black, a strong grower, rather spreading ; the black tartarian, of 
strong fastigiate growth ; the Mayduke, globular and compact ; 
Elton, pyramidal j Downer’s late, rather compact ; Downton, pyra- 
midal j late Duke, similar to Mayduke in form. Nearly all the best- 
fruited sorts form handsome trees, though many of them in the 
western States are more tender and liable to disease than wildings. 
The reader is referred to fruit-books for a selection of cherries 
suited to special localities. All the fine cherries seem to do much 
better on gravelly and clayey soils than in a light sandy loam, or 
rich alluvium, and should never be forced into rapid growth for the 
first five years after planting. In rich soils their growth is so 
rapid, when young, as to engender diseases before they are full 
grown, especially where there is not good subsoil drainage. 
The following, known as bird cherries, are planted solely for 
ornament : 
The European Bird Cherry, Cerasus padiis, is considered by 
many one of the most ornamental of small shrubby trees. That 
excellent horticultural authority, Thomas Meehan, of Germantown, 
