P. pubescens. 14. Torrey Fl. U. S. 469. 1824.
Cerasus pubescens. 15. Seringe DC. Prodr. 2:538. 1825. 16. Beck Bot. Nor. and Mid. U. S. 96. 1833.
Shrub four to ten feet high, sometimes a low tree under cultivation; main branches decumbent and straggling or upright and stout; bark dark brown or reddish, more or less spiny, often warty; branchlets slightly pubescent at first, becoming glabrous, dark reddish-brown, straight or slightly zigzag and rather slender; lenticels few, small, dark.
Winter-buds small, long, acute, with small reddish scales; leaves oval or obovate, short-acute or nearly obtuse at the apex, rounded or nearly acute at the base, margins closely and evenly serrate, thinnish or thickish and somewhat leathery; upper surface glabrous, dull green, lower surface paler and more or less pubescent; petioles less than one-half inch long, stout, tomentose or glabrous; glands two, sometimes more, at the base of the leaves.
Flowers small, appearing before the leaves but the latest of any of the hardy plums; borne in three-flowered umbels closely set along the rigid branches; calyx-tube campanulate, tomentose; petals white, sometimes pinkish, sub-orbicular, narrowed into a claw at the base; pedicels short, slender, stiff, tomentose.
Fruit maturing in late summer in Massachusetts; one-half inch in diameter, globose, slightly flattened at the ends; cavity shallow, borne on a slender pedicel more than one-half inch in length, usually dark purple with a heavy bloom but variable, sometimes red or less frequently yellow; skin thick, tough and acrid; flesh crisp, juicy, sweetish; stone free from the flesh, small, turgid, pointed at both ends, cherry-like, acutely ridged on one and grooved on the other edge.
Prunus maritima, or as it has long been known, the Beach plum, is as yet hardly grown as a domesticated fruit. It is destined, however, in the minds of not a few, because of qualities which we shall describe, to play a more important part in the future of the cultivated plum flora than it has in the past. It has several valuable characters that should fit it alike for direct cultivation and for hybridizing with other species. It is surprising that more has not been done to domesticate the Maritima plums for they were among the first fruits noticed by early explorers and have always been used by both Indians and Whites for culinary purposes. The fact that Domestica plums thrive in their habitat is the only explanation of the non-amelioration of this plum before this.
September third, 1609, Hudson entered the river bearing his name and found “a very good harbor, abundance of blue plums, some currants brought by the natives dried and the country full of great and tall oaks.” The blue plum was the Maritima; and from Hudson’s time nearly all of the accounts of the New World given by early explorers mention this plum. It is probably one of the plums described by Captain John Smith as a cherry “much like a Damson;” by Edward Winslow in 1621, in a letter to England to a friend, as one of his “plums of three sorts”; by Francis Higginson in his New England’s Plantation in 1630; described by Thomas Morton in 1632 in his New English Canaan as having “fruit as bigg as our ordinary bullis.” John Lawson, one of the first of American naturalists, describes them rather more fully as follows:[140] “The American Damsons are both black and white, and about the Bigness of an European Damson. They grow any where if planted from the Stone or Slip; bear a white blossom, and are a good fruit. They are found on the Sand-Banks all along the Coast of America. I have planted several in my Orchard, that came from the Stone, which thrive well amongst the rest of my Trees. But they never grow to the Bigness of the other Trees now spoken of. These are plentiful Bearers.” These are but a few of the many references to the Beach plum but they are enough to show that the colonists were attracted by this wild plum found on a long stretch of the Atlantic seaboard—probably the first fruit to attract attention from Virginia to New England.
To be more explicit as to its range, Prunus maritima, in its typical form, is an inhabitant of the sea beaches and sand dunes from New Brunswick to the Carolinas, or possibly farther south, growing inland usually as far as recent ocean soil formations extend. As it leaves the seaboard marked variations make their appearance, chief of which are, smaller, more oval, smoother and thinner leaves and smaller fruit. The species has been reported as an inhabitant of the sands at the head of Lake Michigan,[141] but the writer, who is well acquainted with this region, has never seen it there, nor is it to be found in the chief herbaria of Michigan as having been collected in the state.