KOSACEJE.
23
PRUNUS HORTULANA.
Wild Plum.
Calyx-lobes glandular-serrate, pubescent on both surfaces. Leaves ovate-lanceolate,long pointed ; petioles glandular. Stone turgid, compressed at the two ends, conspicu-ously rugose and pitted.
Prunus hortulana, L. H. Bailey , Garden and Forest, v. Prunus Chicasa, Watson & Coulter, Gray's Man. ed. 6,90. 152 (in part).
Prunus Americana, var. (?), Patterson, List PI. Oquawka,
5.
A tree, twenty to thirty feet in height, with a slender often inclining trunk frequently five or sixor occasionally ten or twelve inches in diameter, dividing, usually several feet from the ground, into stoutspreading branches; or often a shrub with many upright stems, forming thicket-like clumps. Thebark of the trunk is thin and dark brown, and separates into large thin persistent plates which in exfo-liating display the light red-brown inner layers. The branches are stout, rigid, marked with minutepale lenticels, g abrous or sometimes puberulous during their first summer, rather dark brown when thetree grows in the shade of the forest, and usually unarmed; or on vigorous trees grown in the openground they are sometimes bright red or red-brown in their first year, and darker brown in their secondand are then often armed with stout spinescent spur-like branchlets. The winter-buds are minute anilobtuse, and are covered by chestnut-brown scales with slightly ciliate margins, those of the inner ranksaccrescent with the growing shoots, oblong-lanceolate, acute, glandular-serrate, and sometimes half aninch long at maturity. The leaves are ovate-lanceolate, contracted at the apex into long slender pointswedge-shaped or more or less rounded at the narrow base, and finely serrate with incurved lanceolateglandular teeth ; when they unfold they are pilose with slender white hairs, and at maturity are gla-brous with the exception of the hairs which are gathered on the under surface in the axils of theprimary veins or are scattered along the midribs ; they are rather thick and firm, dark green andlustrous on the upper, and paler on the lower surface, and four to six inches long and an inch to aninch and a half broad, with broad conspicuous midribs orange-colored on the under, and slightly groovedon the upper surface, conspicuous orange-colored veins connected near the margin of the leaf an dprominent reticulate veinlets; they are borne on slender orange-colored petioles & which vary from aninch to an inch and a half in length, and are furnished above the middle with numerous small scattereddark glands; and on vigorous shoots stand nearly at right angles with the stems. The stipules arelanceolate-acuminate, glandular-serrate, and early deciduous. The flowers, which in the neighborhoodof St. Louis appear by the end of April or early in May with the unfolding of the leaves, vary fromtwo thirds of an inch to an inch in diameter, and are produced in two to four-flowered subsessile umbelson slender puberulous pedicels half an inch in length. The calyx-tube is narrowly obconic, puberulous’on the outer surface, with ovate glandular-serrate lobes acute or rounded at the apex, pubescent onthe outer, and pubescent or tomentose on the inner surface, and reflexed after the unfolding of thepetals; these are narrowly obovate, rounded and occasionally emarginate at the apex and contractedbelow into long narrow claws, entire, erose, or occasionally serrate, and pure white, or often markedtoward the base with orange. The stamens are as long as the petals or sometimes rather longer withslender glabrous filaments and minute orange-colored anthers. The pistil is glabrous, with a slenderstyle crowned by a thick truncate stigma. The fruit, which ripens in the neighborhood of St Louis