WOLF
Prunus americana mollis
1. Ia. Hort. Soc. Rpt. 367. 1883. 2. Rural N. Y. 44:645. 1885. 3. Am. Pom. Soc. Cat. 40. 1889. 4. Cornell Sta. Bul. 38:45 fig. 2, 87. 1892. 5. Mich. Sta. Bul. 118:54. 1895. 6. Wis. Sta. Bul. 63:24, 64. 1897. 7. Colo. Sta. Bul. 50:47. 1898. 8. Waugh Plum Cult. 167. 1901. 9. Ga. Sta. Bul. 67:284 fig. 1904. 10. S. Dak. Sta. Bul. 93:42. 1905. 11. Ia. Sta. Bul. 114:148 fig. 1910.
Wolf Free 4, 6. Wolf Freestone 11.
Wolf has long maintained a high place among the standard Americana plums, with which it is usually classed though put in a sub-species, and from which it differs chiefly in having much more pubescence on foliage, floral organs and branchlets. It is noted for its great hardiness, reliability in bearing, attractive and well-flavored fruits and in being one of the few freestones of its kind. This plum is remarkably well adapted for the northern part of the Mississippi Valley and there alone it is worth planting extensively. In New York it might prove valuable in the coldest parts of the State where the Domesticas and Insititias cannot be grown.
This variety was raised from a pit of a wild plum planted on the farm of D. B. Wolf, Wapello County, Iowa, about 1852. Professor J. L. Budd of the Iowa Agricultural College stated in 1885 that for over a quarter of a century the original tree had not failed to produce a partial or large crop annually on the grounds of the originator. A spurious clingstone type of the Wolf has been propagated in some nurseries but this false plum is readily distinguished from the true freestone type. The variety was added to the American Pomological Society fruit catalog list in 1889, dropped in 1891, and replaced in 1897.
Tree large, vigorous, spreading, low, and open-topped, hardy, productive, healthy; branches rough and shaggy, thorny, dark ash-gray, with numerous, small lenticels; branchlets somewhat slender, short, twiggy, with internodes below medium in length, green changing to dull brownish-drab, overspread with thick pubescence, with numerous, small lenticels; leaf-buds very small, short, conical, strongly appressed.
Leaves falling early, oval, one and seven-eighths inches wide, three and seven-eighths inches long, thin; upper surface medium green, lightly pubescent, with a narrow groove on the midrib; lower surface silvery-green, pubescent; apex taper-pointed, margin coarsely and doubly serrate, eglandular; petiole one-half inch long, velvety, tinged red, glandless or with one or two small, globose, yellowish glands on the stalk or base of the leaf.
Blooming season of average length, late; flowers opening after the leaves, one inch across, the buds tinged yellow changing to white as the flowers expand; borne on lateral buds and spurs; pedicels nine-sixteenths inch long, thickly pubescent, green; calyx-tube greenish-red, campanulate, covered with short, fine pubescence; calyx-lobes narrow, acute, heavily pubescent on both surfaces, with few marginal glands, reflexed; petals inclined to curl, long-oval, fringed, long and narrowly clawed; anthers yellowish; filaments three-eighths inch long; pistil sparingly hairy on the ovary, equal to or shorter than the stamens, frequently defective.