Czar seems to have a very good reputation in Europe, in England especially, as a culinary fruit but in America it is but second rate for cooking and cannot be called a dessert plum at all. Its earliness might make it valuable were it not for the fact that Clyman is as early and in nearly all other respects is a better plum. The Czar, like Clyman, is not quite hardy and lacks somewhat in productiveness. The stone of Czar is usually covered with a granular, gummy exudation about the apex and its flowers are peculiar in being more or less doubled. It is doubtful if this variety is worth planting in New York. This plum was raised by Thomas Rivers, Sawbridgeworth, England, from a Prince Englebert seed fertilized by Early Prolific. It first fruited in 1874 and was named for the Czar of Russia who visited England during the same year. Ellwanger & Barry, of Rochester, New York, offered it for sale in the United States in 1886. Tree intermediate in size and vigor, round and open-topped, not always hardy, moderately productive; branches covered with many fruit-spurs, smooth except for the numerous raised lenticels and transverse cracks in the bark; branchlets covered with thick pubescence throughout the season, with numerous small lenticels; leaf-buds large, strongly free; leaves folded upward, oval, one and three-quarters inches wide, three inches long; petiole one-half inch long, thick, pubescent, eglandular or with one or two large, yellowish-green glands at the base of the leaf; blooming season intermediate in time, short; flowers appearing after the leaves, one inch or more across, white, with a yellowish tinge at the apex of the petals; borne in clusters on lateral spurs, in pairs or in threes; filaments five-sixteenths inch long; pistil glabrous except at the base, slightly longer than the stamens. Fruit very early, season short; one and one-half inches in diameter, irregular roundish-oval, compressed, dark purplish-black, overspread with thick bloom; flesh yellow, coarse and somewhat granular, fibrous, tender, sweet, pleasant flavor; good; stone free, three-quarters inch by five-eighths inch in size, oval or slightly ovate, blunt at the base, somewhat acute at the apex, with ridged and roughened surfaces; ventral suture wide, broadly furrowed, with a short blunt wing; dorsal suture acute or with a narrow, shallow, indistinct groove. DAMSON _Prunus insititia_