The Cerasifera plums are small trees, usually upright but in some forms with spreading branches which are commonly unarmed, glabrous and brownish in color. The leaves are ovate and smaller and thinner and with more finely serrate margin than those of the Domestica plums. It blooms prolifically and bears large, white, single or paired flowers, making a most beautiful tree when in flower. The fruit is small, round, and cherry-like, from half an inch to an inch in diameter, usually red but sometimes yellow. The flesh is soft, sweetish or sub-acid and poor. The stone is turgid, smooth and pointed. The species is variable in nearly all tree-characters, and were it not surpassed by other plums for its fruit there would undoubtedly be a great number of varieties cultivated for the markets. There are, however, but few cultivated Cerasiferas, only nineteen being described in _The Plums of New York_. It is very generally distributed wherever plums are grown, because of the use to which it has been put as stocks for other species. For this purpose it is held in high esteem the world over. In the nurseries of New York it is now used more than any other stock and it is common to find it fruiting here and there from plants set for or used as stocks. In fact practically all the cultivated varieties have arisen as survivals of plants meant for stocks. It is almost certain that the Cerasifera, or Myrobalan, as it is universally known by horticulturists, dwarfs the cion and that it is not equally well suited to all varieties; but it does not “sprout” as badly as some other stocks, is adapted to many soils, and the young trees grow well and are rapidly budded, giving at the start a strong and vigorous orchard tree. The Cerasifera plums are handsome trees. The foliage is a fresh and beautiful green and whether covered with a mass of flowers or loaded with red or yellow fruit these plums are as handsome as any of our cultivated fruit trees, and as desirable for ornamentals. The hardiness, thriftiness, freedom from disease and adaptability to soils make the species desirable for hybridizing. A number of breeders of plums have made use of it with some indications of a promising future, several interesting hybrid offspring of this species being described in _The Plums of New York_. The small number of varieties of Cerasifera cultivated for their fruit indicates that but little can be expected from this species by plum-growers, since so little has come from it in the shape of edible fruits, though it has been under general cultivation for over three hundred years, at least, as an ornamental and as a stock. Several valuable groups of ornamentals have arisen from Cerasifera, of which the following are most notable:—