Flowers white, fading to rose, about an inch across; appearing before the leaves; usually borne in threes, often in pairs on short pubescent pedicels; calyx campanulate, with lobes pubescent on the outer and hairy on the inner surface; petals twice the length of the sepals, obovate, and contracted into short claws; filaments and ovary glabrous; style slender and funnel-shaped at the apex. Fruit ripens in late summer or early autumn; roundish or oblong, about one inch in length, borne on a short, stout stem, dark red or purplish; flesh subacid, well-flavored, clinging to the flattish or turgid stone which varies greatly in size, pointed at both ends, crested on the ventral edge and grooved on the other. _Prunus subcordata_, the Pacific or Western plum, is an inhabitant of the region east of the Coast Range from southern Oregon to central California. It is so rarely found on the seacoast as to have escaped the attention of the early botanists and remained unknown until the middle of the Nineteenth Century, when Hartweg, working in the interior of California, brought the plant to notice. This wild plum is not common except in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in northern California and southern Oregon, where it often forms thickets of small trees along streams, thriving in fresh, fertile, sandy soils, in canons, on hillsides or in the forests of yellow pine which are found in this region. Hammond[124] writes of it growing here as usually a small tree but often seen as a shrub from four to five feet high. Of the frequency of the occurrence he says: “It often sets the whole countryside ablaze in the autumn, with the abundance of its scarlet and crimson colors, mingled, of course, with red and yellow, and garnished with a sprinkling of green.” Sandberg[125] reports having collected _Prunus subcordata_ as far north and east as Nez Perces County, northern Idaho, in the Craig Mountains at an altitude of about 2,900 feet, but this report is based on an error in determination, the specimen collected by Sandberg being clearly a European species. The tree and the fruit vary greatly according to the locality. This Subcordata plum is one of the standard food products of the aborigines in the region in which it grows, being eaten either raw or cooked; and it is sometimes dried in considerable quantities at the harvesting places and carried considerable distances to the Indian villages.[126] The trappers, the first men to enter the habitat of this plum, followed by the gold-seekers and ranchers, all knew and esteemed the fruit. The early settlers regarded it as the most useful of all the wild fruits of the Coast and attempts were made at an early date to domesticate it. Of these Wickson says:[127]