DOWNING
DOWNING
Prunus munsoniana
1. Ia. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 287, 1887. 2. Ibid. 275, 448. 1893. 3. Ibid. 334. 1894. 4. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:24, 30. 1897. 5. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 24. 1897. 6. Waugh Plum Cult. 185. 1901. 7. Wis. Sta. Bul. 87:12. 1901. 8. Ia. Sta. Bul. 46:269. 1900. 9. Ia. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 445. 1903. 10. Ohio Sta. Bul. 162:247 fig., 254, 255. 1905. 11. S. Dak. Sta. Bul. 93:15. 1905.
Charles Downing 1, 2, 3, 4, 7. Charles Downing 5, 6, 8, 11.
Downing is one of the best varieties of its species. The trees are large, usually productive, not often sterile as are some of its near of kin sorts and for a southern plum the variety is remarkably hardy, never having suffered in Geneva from cold. The only fault that can be found with the tree is that the foliage is quite susceptible to the shot-hole fungus. The fruit is particularly attractive with its bright, solid, garnet-red skin, golden flesh and sweet, pleasant flavor. Unfortunately the flesh is a little too fibrous and clings too tenaciously to the stone for pleasant eating. Downing adds a pleasing variety to any collection of plums and in some regions ought to sell with profit to the grower for the markets.
H. A. Terry of Crescent, Iowa, grew Downing from seed of the Wild Goose, which the originator thinks was fertilized by some Americana variety. The Downing, however, shows no traces of Americana parentage. It is reported as originating in 1882 and first fruiting in 1885. The American Pomological Society placed this variety on its fruit catalog list in 1897.
Tree large, spreading, flat-topped, hardy in New York, variable in productiveness; branches rough, dark gray, with a few large lenticels; branchlets slender, with very short internodes, greenish-red changing to dull reddish-brown, glossy, somewhat pubescent, with numerous, small, slightly raised lenticels; leaf-buds small, short, obtuse, appressed.
Leaves folded upward, broadly lanceolate, peach-like, one and three-eighths inches wide, three inches long, thin; upper surface reddish late in the fall, smooth, glabrous, with deeply grooved midrib; lower surface glabrous except along the midrib and larger veins; apex taper-pointed, margin very finely serrate, eglandular or sometimes with small dark glands; petiole thirteen-sixteenths inch long, slender, tinged with red, pubescent along one side, glandless or with from one to five small, globose, yellowish-red glands usually on the stalk.