SIERRA PLUM. WILD PLUM.
Prunus subcordata, Benth. Rose Family.
Trees or shrubs three to ten feet high, with ash-gray bark and branchlets occasionally spinescent. Leaves.—Short-petioled; ovate; sharply and finely serrate; an inch or two long. Umbels.—Two- to four-flowered. Pedicels three to six lines long. Flowers.—White; six lines across. Fruit.—Red or purple; six to fifteen lines long; fleshy; smooth. (Otherwise as P. ilicifolia.) Hab.—Mostly eastward of the Central Valley, from San Felipe into Oregon.
The wild plum reaches its greatest perfection in the north, where the shrubs are found in extensive groves covering whole mountain slopes.
[WILD BUCKWHEAT—Eriogonum fasciculatum.]
![[WILD BUCKWHEAT—Eriogonum fasciculatum.]](#3624944100741987669_f013.png.id-8249410825028581316.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
The flowers, which are produced before the leaves, from March to May, are white, fading to rose-color. By August and September, the bushes are loaded with the handsome fruit, richly mottled with red, yellow, and purple; and these colors are duplicated in the autumn foliage, which in the North becomes very brilliant.
This fruit is excellent for canning, preserving, and making into jelly. Many families make annual pilgrimages to these wild-plum orchards of the mountains and carry away bushels of the fruit; but even then countless tons of it go to waste.
P. demissa, Walpers,—the wild cherry or choke-cherry,—is found upon mountains throughout the State, but less abundantly near the coast. Its small white flowers grow in racemes three or four inches long, and these ripen into the pretty shining black cherries, half an inch in diameter. It often covers acres upon acres of rough land, and commences to bear when but two feet high.
Housewives of our mountain districts make a marmalade of the fruit, which has a peculiarly delicious, tart flavor.