The number of varieties of Americana plums is a testimonial to the merits of the species. There are about 260 varieties of them more or less disseminated. There are many divergent types of these and since all are far from what may be eventually expected from the species the number of varieties will undoubtedly greatly increase and in still other directions. In the meantime the great majority have fallen by the wayside. The weeding-out process seems to be in this case the chief agent of progression. A fault with the varieties now before the public is that many of them are so similar that a difference can hardly be detected. The elimination of the great majority of the varieties of this species now in the catalogs and a much more judicious selection of varieties for future dissemination would relieve pomology of the burden it now carries in the numerous sorts of Americanas. =PRUNUS AMERICANA MOLLIS=[115] Torrey and Gray =1.= Torrey and Gray _Fl. N. Am._ =1=:407. 1840. =2.= Sargent _10th Cen. U. S._ =9=:65. 1883. =3.= Coulter _Cont. U. S. Nat. Herb._ =2=:102. 1891. =4.= Sargent _Sil. N. Am._ =4=:19. 1892. =5.= Waugh _Bot. Gaz._ =26=:50. 1898. _P. americana lanata._ =6.= Sudworth _Nom. Arb. Fl. U. S._ 237. 1897. _P. lanata._ =7.= Mackenzie and Bush _Trans. Acad. Sci. St. Louis_ =12=:83. 1902. _Prunus americana mollis_ is a western and southwestern form of _Prunus americana_, the sub-species being distinguished from the species by the amount and character of the pubescence on the leaves and shoots. The leaves, petioles and shoots of this plum are soft-pubescent, almost tomentose, the tomentum being pale in color and usually very dense; the calyx-lobes are pubescent on both sides and the pedicels are appressed and densely pubescent. According to Bailey, there is a form of this sub-species “with flowers as completely double as those of St. Peter’s wreath, or similar spireas.” This double-flowering plum we have not seen. It is impossible to give the range of _Prunus americana mollis_ as the woolly-leaved plum of the west gradually passes into the smooth-leaved species of the east and the two forms are not infrequently mixed in the South and Southwest; or possibly it would be better to say that they run into each other though the extreme forms are sufficiently distinct as to be readily mistaken for separate species. It can only be said that it is to be found in the greatest abundance in the region extending from southern Iowa through Missouri. Only two varieties of this plum, Wolf and Van Buren, are in general cultivation, both of which originated in Iowa. In neither fruit nor tree-characters do these differ greatly from the Americana plums.