SCHMIDT 186 SHORT-STEM MONTMORENCY 188 SKLANKA 188 SUDA 192 TIMME 192 VLADIMIR 194 WINDSOR 198 WOOD 200 YELLOW SPANISH 202 THE CHERRIES OF NEW YORK CHAPTER I CULTIVATED CHERRIES CHERRIES AND THEIR KINDRED The genus Prunus plays a very important part in horticulture. It furnishes, in temperate climates, the stone-fruits, plants of ancient and modern agriculture of which there are a score or more commonly cultivated and at least as many more sparingly grown for their edible fruits. Of these stone-fruits the species of cherries rank with those of the plum and the peach in commercial importance while the several botanical groups of the apricot and almond are less important, but hardly less well-known, members of this notable genus. Prunus is of interest, too, because the history of its edible species follows step by step the history of agriculture. The domestication of its fruits from wild progenitors, most of which are still subjects of common observation, illustrates well the influences and conditions under which plants have generally been brought into domestication. The genus is also of more than ordinary note because the number of its economic species is being increased almost yearly by new-found treasures from North America and Asia, not varieties but species, which promise under future domestication still further to enrich horticulture. The plum and the peach surpass the cherry in diversity of flavor, aroma, texture, color, form and size, characters which make fruits pleasant to the palate and beautiful to the eye; but the cherry, perhaps, plays a more important part than the plum or the peach in domestic economy. It has fewer prejudices as to soil and climate, hence is much more widely distributed and is more easily grown, being better represented in the orchards and gardens in the regions where the three fruits grow. The cherry, too, fruits more quickly after planting, ripens earlier in the season and its varieties are more regular in bearing and usually more fruitful--characters that greatly commend it to fruit-growing people. Probably it is the most popular of all fruits for the garden, dooryard, roadside and small orchard. All in all, while adorning a somewhat humbler place in pomology, it is more generally useful than the showier and more delicate plum and peach.