Cercocarpus eximius Rydb.
Leaves oblong-obovate to narrow-elliptic, acute or rounded and often apiculate at apex, gradually narrowed from above the middle and acute at base, their margins revolute, often undulate, and entire or dentate toward the apex with few small straight or incurved apiculate teeth, when they unfold coated with hoary tomentum, and at maturity thick, gray-green and covered with soft white hairs or nearly glabrous on the upper surface, pale and tomentulose on the lower surface, ½′—1′ long and ¼′—½′ wide, with a thin prominent midrib and primary veins; petioles stout, tomentose, ultimately pubescent or nearly glabrous, 1/16′—⅕′ in length; stipules linear-lanceolate, tomentose, about half as long as the petioles. Flowers appearing from March to May and often again in August, nearly sessile, solitary, in pairs or rarely in 3-flowered clusters in the axils of the crowded leaves; calyx-tube slender, ⅙′—¼′ long, thickly covered on the outer surface, like the short rounded lobes, with long white hairs. Fruit: mature calyx-tube short-stalked, light red-brown, villose, deeply cleft at apex, about ¼′ long; akene nearly terete, covered with long white hairs; style 1′—1½′ in length.
A tree, 20°—25° high, with a long straight trunk sometimes 6′—8′ in diameter, erect rigid branches forming a narrow open or irregular head, and slender bright red-brown lustrous branchlets marked irregularly by large scattered pale lenticels, covered at first with a thick coat of hoary tomentum, villose or pubescent for two or three years and ultimately ashy gray or gray tinged with red, the spur-like lateral branchlets much roughened by the ring-like scars of fallen leaves. Bark about ⅛′ thick, divided by shallow fissures and broken on the surface into small light red-brown scales.
Distribution. In forests of Pines and Oaks usually at altitudes of about 5000°, on the dry ridges of the mountains of western Texas, and of southern New Mexico and Arizona; in Arizona ranging northward to Oak Creek Cañon, near Flagstaff, Coconino County (P. Lowell); and southward over the mountains of northern Mexico.
10. PRUNUS B. & H. Plum and Cherry.
Trees or shrubs, with bitter astringent properties, slender branchlets, marked by the usually small elevated horizontal leaf-scars with 2 or 3 fibro-vascular bundle-scars, and small scaly buds, their scales imbricated in many rows, those of the inner rows accrescent and often colored. Leaves convolute or conduplicate in the bud, alternate, simple, usually serrate, petiolate, deciduous or persistent; stipules free from the petiole, usually lanceolate and glandular, often minute, early deciduous. Flowers in axillary umbels or corymbs, or in terminal or axillary racemes, appearing from separate buds before, with, or later than the leaves, or on leafy branches; calyx 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in the bud; disk thin, adnate to the calyx-tube, glandular, often colored; petals 5, white, deciduous; stamens usually 15—20, inserted with the petals in 3 rows, those of the outer row 10, opposite the petals, those of the next row alternate with them and with those of the inner row, sometimes 30 in 3 rows; filaments filiform, free, incurved in the bud; anthers oval, attached on the back; ovary inserted in the bottom of the calyx-tube, 1-celled; style terminal, dilated at apex into a truncate stigma; ovules 2, suspended; raphe ventral; the micropyle superior. Fruit a 1-seeded drupe; flesh thick and pulpy or dry and coriaceous; stone bony, smooth, rugose, or pitted, compressed, indehiscent. Seed filling the cavity of the nut, suspended; seed-coat thin, membranaceous, pale brown; cotyledons thick and fleshy; radicle superior.
Prunus with about one hundred and twenty species is generally distributed over the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, and is abundant in North America, eastern Asia, western and central Asia and central Europe, ranging southward in the New World into tropical America, and to southern Asia in the Old World. Of the twenty-five or thirty species which occur in the United States, twenty-two are arborescent in habit. Several of the species bear fruits which are important articles of human food; many contain in the seeds and leaves hydrocyanic acid, to which is due their peculiar odor, and the fruit of some of the species is used to flavor cordials. The wood of Prunus is close-grained, solid, and durable, and a few of the species are important timber-trees.
Prunus is the classical name of the Plum-tree.