Leaves five and one-half inches long, one and one-eighth inches wide, curled downward, oval to obovate-lanceolate, thick; upper surface smooth, dull, dark green; lower surface grayish-green; margin coarsely serrate, tipped with reddish-brown glands; petiole five-eighths inch long, glandless or with one or two small, globose, reddish glands at the base of the leaf. Flower-buds tender, small, pointed, plump, appressed, brownish-red; flowers appear very early, a few days earlier than _Prunus tomentosa_, usually on short spurs; blossoms one and five-eighths inches across, whitish, tinged with pale pink near the margins, well distributed, usually singly; pedicels short, glabrous, green; calyx-tube reddish-green, orange-colored within, obconic, glabrous; calyx-lobes long, narrow, glabrous within and without; petals widely spaced, oval, shallowly dentate, tapering to long, white claws; filaments shorter than the petals; pistil red, heavily pubescent at the ovary, as long as the stamens. Fruit less than one inch in diameter, nearly spherical; cavity medium in width and depth; suture shallow, deeper toward the base; apex mucronate; color grayish-white turning yellow at maturity; pubescence downy; skin wrinkles and roughens before maturity and soon decays; flesh very thin, rather dry, tasteless and insipid, lacking almost entirely the flavor of the peach; not edible; stone separates from the pulp readily even before ripe, nearly spherical, plump, very blunt at base and apex; surfaces deeply pitted. Father David's peach, _Prunus davidiana_, has been grown in Europe since 1865 as an ornamental, seeds of it having been sent from China to France in that year by Father David, a missionary traveler.[175] The species is described as flowering in America in the Arnold Arboretum as early as 1888,[176] seeds from which the trees grew having been sent from China. Some ten or twelve years ago the species was distributed by the United States Department of Agriculture, trees being received at this Station in the spring of 1906. Meanwhile, agricultural explorers representing this country in China have discovered that the species is much used by the Chinese as a stock upon which to work other species of Prunus. Whereupon, new distributions were made through seeds and plants to nearly every fruit-growing state in the Union. We are, therefore, now able to speak of the behavior of the Davidiana peach in America with some degree of confidence as to its future as a stock for peaches. But, first, a word as to its habitat and uses in China.