“Naturally, the settlers who went every year to the sand hills
for plums brought back trees to plant in the gardens they were
opening. Almost every farm within the range mentioned above
had a few or many of the dwarf trees growing. Some of these
were fruitful and worth their room, but most of them have now
died out, or are neglected and forgotten. This is because
people have paid no attention to their selection, propagation
and cultivation. Further than this, however, the sand plum has
often failed signally to come up to its record when transferred
to cultivation. It seems not to adapt itself readily to a wide
diversity of soils and conditions.”
The sub-species is easily mistaken for the species; in herbarium
specimens it is almost impossible to distinguish between them, but in
general the Sand plum differs from Angustifolia in its dwarfer habit,
shorter-jointed, zigzag, ashy-gray branches, smaller but thicker leaves,
larger, thicker skinned and better flavored fruit which ripens later, and
in a smaller and somewhat differently marked stone. In distinguishing the
two groups some allowance must be made for the adaptability of plums to
different environments.
=PRUNUS ANGUSTIFOLIA VARIANS= Wight and Hedrick
Plant a small tree, attaining a height of twenty-five feet;
trunk small but well-defined; branches spreading, bushy,
sometimes armed with spinescent branchlets; young wood slender,
more or less zigzag, usually glabrous, glossy, reddish but
approaching a chestnut-brown; lenticels few, scattered,
yellowish, raised.
Leaves oblong, oval-lanceolate or rarely slightly
obovate-lanceolate, one and one-fifth to two and one-fifth
inches long, three-quarters to one inch broad, gradually
narrowed at the base, acute at the apex; margins very minutely
glandular-serrate; upper surface glabrous and somewhat
lustrous; lower surface paler, glabrous or sparingly hairy
along the midrib and in the axils of the lateral veins;
petioles slender, usually reddish, about one-half inch long,
pubescent along the upper side, eglandular or sometimes with
one or two glands at the apex; stipules small, linear and
glandular-dentate.
Flowers appearing from early in March and before the leaves
in the South, to the middle of April and with the leaves in
the North, in dried specimens about one-half inch broad;
pedicels three-eighths to one-half inch long, glabrous;
calyx campanulate, the tube glabrous; calyx-lobes usually
shorter than the tube, oblong and obtuse, glabrous on the
outer surface, glabrous or sometimes sparingly pubescent on
the inner, the margin ciliate, eglandular; petals obovate,
gradually narrowed toward the base, erose or entire toward the
apex.
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