_Prunus insititia_ now grows wild in nearly all temperate parts of Europe and western Asia—from the Mediterranean northward into Norway, Sweden and Russia. The botanists of Europe very generally agree that its original habitat was in southern and southeastern Europe and the adjoining parts of Asia, and that elsewhere it is an escape from cultivation. Hooker[68] says that _Prunus insititia_ grows in western temperate Himalaya, cultivated and indigenous, from Gurwhal to Kashmir, the type being that of the “common yellow-fruited Bullace.” A few botanical writers hold that it is truly wild in the parts of Europe where now found growing. There are also not a few botanists who, as has been stated in the discussion of the Domestica plums, unite the Insititias with the Domesticas, and others who combine these two with the Spinosa plums in one species, _Prunus communis_.[69] It is possible that the species is occasionally found naturalized in eastern United States; several botanists so give it. Wherever the habitat of the Insititia plums may have been, practically all writers from the Greeks and Romans who first mention this fruit to those of the present time, connect the cultivated varieties in one way or another with the old Semite city, Damascus. It is almost certain that the Syrians or Persians were the first to cultivate these plums, and that they were unknown in Europe as domesticated varieties until the Greeks first and the Romans afterward came in intimate contact with the people of the Orient. Thus it is often stated in the old pomologies that Alexander the Great brought these plums from the Orient after his expedition of conquest and that some centuries later Pompey, returning from his invasion of the eastern countries, brought plums to the Roman Empire. The history of the Insititia plums in America has been given in the main in the discussion of the Domestica plums, for the varieties of the two species have never been kept separate by plum-growers, all being grouped together as European plums. It is probable, however, that the Damson plums of this species were earlier introduced and more generally grown than any other of the European plums by the English settlers of America, as the references to plum-growing before the Revolution are largely to the Damsons. The reasons for this early preference for these plums are that they come true to seed while most varieties of the Domestica do not; and trees and cions were not readily transportable in colonial times; and, too, the Damsons have always been favorite plums with the English.