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of the northern states. Fortunately several years ago the Park Depart- 
ment of Rochester, New York, with an intelligence and foresight not 
always shown by municipal officials, sent one of its assistant superin- 
tendents to Oklahoma and Texas to study the wild Plums and to collect 
living plants and other material needed for their better understanding. 
The result of several expeditions is a remarkable collection of hundreds 
of living plants which makes Rochester the best place to see and 
study the Plum-trees of the Arkansas-Oklahoma-Texas region, that 
is the region where there are more of these plants than anywhere else 
in the world. A preliminary study of the collection reveals numerous in- 
teresting new forms, some of them hybrids and others possibly new spec- 
ies. It shows, too, that among these Plums are plants of exceptional beau- 
ty when their fruit ripens. All Plums are handsome when in early spring 
their white flowers cover the leafless branches; on some species the 
flowers are rather larger than on others, but as flowering plants there 
is no great choice between them. They greatly vary, however, in their 
leaves and in the size and shape of their fruit. From the fruit of 
nearly all American Plums good jellies and preserves can be made, and 
selected seedling forms of several of the species have received the 
attention of pomologists and are now cultivated as fruit trees in parts 
of this country where the varieties of the European Prunus domestica 
cannot be successfully grown. As ornamental plants merely the value 
of some of the American Plums is not yet understood. The handsom- 
est of them, Prunus hortulana, the most beautiful of all Plum-trees, 
is common from southeastern Illinois to eastern Kansas and Oklahoma. 
It is a tree from twenty to thirty feet high with a clean trunk and 
wide-spreading branches which form a round-topped shapely head. 
The leaves are unusually large for a Plum-tree, and smooth and very 
lustrous on the upper surface. The fruit ripens late in September and 
in October, and is globose or slightly longer than broad, scarlet, lus- 
trous, and from three-quarters of an inch to an inch in diameter. It 
is produced in great quantities and ripens before the leaves change 
color or fall; and a well-fruited tree of Prunus hortulana is more beau- 
tiful in early October than any Crabapple or Hawthorn, or indeed than 
any other small tree which can be grown in the northern states. In the 
Rochester collection are plants of Prunus hortulana which are not 
trees but wide-spreading shrubs which should prove useful in gardens 
too small for the proper display of the tree form. Prunus Reverchonii 
has also proved a success at Rochester. On the prairies of eastern 
Texas it is a low shrub often spreading into great thickets, but in cul- 
tivation at the north it is inclined to become a small tree. The leaves 
are smaller and less lustrous than those of P. hortulana, and the fruit 
is smaller but equally brilliant and abundant. Prunus venulosa, an- 
other of the prairie species of eastern Texas, and the different forms 
of the Chickasaw Plum (P. angustifolia) , especially the broad-leaved, 
large-fruited var. varians, and the different forms of Prunus Munson- 
iana of which the Wild Goose Plum is the best known, can now all be 
seen to advantage in Rochester. The “Big-tree Plum” so-called of 
Texas {Prunus mexicana), the largest, most abundant and most 
conspicuous Plum-tree of Texas, has also proved hardy in Rochester. 
