Prunus fasciculata
{{Short description|Species of tree}}
{{Hatnote|Not to be confused with Prunus fremontii, called desert apricot}}
{{speciesbox
| image = Prunus fasciculata 4.jpg
| display_parents = 2
| parent = Prunus sect. Emplectocladus
| taxon = Prunus fasciculata
| synonyms =*Emplectocladus fasciculata Torr.
- Amygdalus fasciculata (Torr.) Greene
| synonyms_ref =[http://www.tropicos.org/Name/27801094 Tropicos, Prunus fasciculata (Torr.) A. Gray ]
}}
Prunus fasciculata, also known as wild almond, desert almond, or desert peachBailey, L.H., Bailey, E.Z., and the staff of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium. 1976. Hortus third: A concise dictionary of plants cultivated in the United States and Canada. Macmillan, New York. is a spiny and woody shrub producing wild almonds, which is native to western deserts of North America.
Description
Prunus fasciculata grows up to {{Convert|2|m|ft|abbr=off|frac=2}} high, exceptionally to {{Convert|3|m|1|frac=2}}, with many horizontal (divaricate) branches, generally with thorns (spinescent), often in thickets. The bark is gray and without hairs (glabrous).{{cite web | url= http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/get_IJM.pl?tid=Prunus%20fasciculata | date= 2018 | title= Prunus fasciculata | website= in Jepson Flora Project (eds.) Jepson eFlora | publisher= Jepson Herbarium; University of California, Berkeley | accessdate= 2018-07-06}}
File:Prunus fasciculata 8.jpg.]]
File:Prunus fasciculata 7792.JPG
The leaves are {{Convert|5|-|20|mm|abbr=off|frac=4|1}} long, narrow (linear), with a broad, flatten tip that tapers to a narrow base, (spatulate, oblanceolate), arranged on very short leaf stem (petiole) like bundles of needles (fascicles). Sepals are hairless and without lobes or teeth. The flowers are small and white with 3-mm petals, occurring either solitary or in fascicles and are without a petal stem (subsessile) growing from the leaf axils. They are dioecious. Male flowers have 10–15 stamens; female, one or more pistils. The plant displays numerous fragrant flowers from March to May, which attract the bees that pollinate it. The drupe is about {{Convert|1|cm|frac=4}} long, ovoid, light brown and pubescent with thin flesh.{{cite book | author=Geological Survey of California | title=Botany of California: Volume I: 2nd (Revised) Edition | publisher=Little, Brown, and Company | year=1880 |page=168 }}{{cite book | author=Rydberg, Per Axel | title=Flora of the Rocky Mountains and Adjacent Plains: Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Neighboring Parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and British Columbia | url=https://archive.org/details/florarockymount00rydbgoog | publisher=Published by the Author | location=New York | year=1917 |page=[https://archive.org/details/florarockymount00rydbgoog/page/n473 452]}}
The species lives many years (is perennial), and drops its leaves (deciduous).{{GRIN|accessdate=12 January 2018}}{{GRIN|Emplectocladus fasciculata|447224|accessdate=12 January 2018}}{{cite book |last=Jepson |first=Willis Linn |url=http://bscit.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/display_page?page=232&elib_id=3062&format=jpeg |title=A Flora of California, Volume 2 |publisher=University of California |year=1936 |location=Berkeley |pages=229–230}}
Taxonomy
The plant was first classified as Emplectocladus fasciculata in an 1853 paper by John Torrey based on a collection of the plants of California acquired during the third expedition of John C. Fremont in 1845;This famous expedition combined scientific and military operations, merging into the war with Mexico of 1848 and the acquisition of California for the United States. Fremont's mandate had been to explore Oregon. He followed secret orders to establish a presence in California. Apparently he did accomplish both scientific and military objectives (but not in Oregon) and the pre-publication in Torrey's paper of his remaining plant specimens (some had been lost on the Missouri) helped him during his later prosecutions for insubordination. whence the synonym Emplectocladus fasciculata (Torr.){{Cite book | last=Torrey | first=John | author-link=John Torrey | contribution=Plantae Fremontianae; or Descriptions of Plants Collected by Col. J. C. Fremont, in California | title=Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge Volume 6 Paper 1 | place=Washington, DC | publisher=Smithsonian Institution | year=1854}} The contents of this volume are stated in {{cite book | title=The American Catalogue of Books (1856) | year=1856 | url=https://archive.org/details/americancatalog00londgoog | location=London | publisher=Sampson Low, Son & Co. |page=[https://archive.org/details/americancatalog00londgoog/page/n73 59]}} The paper, however, had already been published independently in April, 1853, according to {{cite book | author=Karslake, Frank | title=Book-Auction Records | year=1971 | publisher=Dawsons of Pall Mall | location=London, New York and Edinburgh |page=1050}} The work was illustrated by Isaac Sprague. Torrey devised the genus Empectocladus to comprise a few desert shrubs. According to Silas C. Mason{{Cite book | last=Mason | first=Silas C. | contribution=U. S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Plant Industry-Bulletin Nos. 192 to 197 Inclusive 1910-1911: Drought Resistance of the Olive in the Southwestern States | year=1911 | title=Bulletins of the Bureau of Plant Industry Nos. 192 to 197 Inclusive 1910-1911 | volume=XXV |page=24 | place=Washington | publisher=Government Printing Office }} the genus has
:... a top so densely branched, angled and interlocked as to well merit the name Emplectocladus (Greek, "woven branch"), signifying interlocked branches ...
According to George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker{{Cite book |author1=Bentham, George |author2=Hooker, Joseph Dalton | title=Genera plantarum ad exemplaria imprimis in herbariis kewensibus servata definita Volume I Part II | publisher=Lovell Reeve & Co. | location=London | year=1865 |page=614 }} the name fasciculata means that the leaves are in fascicles, or little bundles:
:Leaves small, spatulate, as it were of precious stones, subglobose fasciculate"Folia minuta, spathulata, e gemmis subglobosis quasi fasciculata ...."
However, Asa Gray publishing in 1874 reclassified Empectocladus to Prunus resulting in the designation Prunus fasciculata (Torr.) A. Gray (subg. Emplectocladus), in which the desert shrubs become a subgenus.{{cite journal | title=Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1874) | volume=10:70 }} In 1996 Jepson defined a California variety with smooth leaves, punctata, in comparison to which Gray's species, with pubescent leaves, becomes the variety, fasciculata. Unfortunately, the binomial Prunus punctata was already used in 1878 to describe what is now known to be Prunus phaeosticta.The Flora of British India 2(5): 317. 1878. Prunus fasciculata punctata grows in the coastal ranges as well as in the desert.{{cite web | title=ITIS Report | url=https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=529875}}{{cite book |author1=Stuart, John David |author2=Sawyer, John O. | title=Trees and Shrubs of California |page=305 | publisher=University of California Press | year=2001 | isbn=978-0-520-22109-3 }}
= Palaeobotanical evidence =
Middens from rodent activities such as those of the pack rat are a rich source of plant macrofossils from late Pleistocene habitats. At Point of Rocks in Nevada by 11,700 BP, desert shrubs such as desert almond had replaced Juniper and Joshua trees, indicating the onset of the modern desert.{{cite book |author=Sauer, Jonathan Deininger |url=https://archive.org/details/plantmigrationdy0000saue_p6e6 |title=Plant Migration: the dynamics of geographic patterning in seed plant species |publisher=University of California Press |year=1988 |isbn=978-0-520-06871-1 |page=[https://archive.org/details/plantmigrationdy0000saue_p6e6/page/168 168] |url-access=registration}} Somewhat earlier, 17,000–14,000 BP, desert almond flourished in a mixed desert and woodland ecology on the Colorado Plateau.{{cite journal |last=Anderson |first=R. Scott |author2=Betancourt, Julio L. |author3=Mead, Jim I. |author4=Hevly, Richard H. |author5=Adam, David P. |year=2000 |title=Middle- and late-Wisconsin paleobotanic and paleoclimatic records from the southern Colorado Plateau, USA |journal=Palaeo |volume=155 |issue=1–2 |page=45 |bibcode=2000PPP...155...31A |doi=10.1016/s0031-0182(99)00093-0}} The article is available as a .pdf file at [http://wwwpaztcn.wr.usgs.gov/julio_pdf/Anderson_ea.pdf].
Distribution and habitat
The species is native to the deserts of Arizona, California, Baja California, Nevada, and Utah.{{cite web |last=Sullivan |first=Steven. K. |date=2018 |title=Prunus fasciculata |url=http://www.wildflowersearch.com/search?&PlantName=Prunus+fasciculata |website=Wildflower Search |accessdate=2018-07-06}}[http://bonap.net/MapGallery/County/Prunus%20fasciculata.png Biota of North America Program 2014 county distribution map][http://swbiodiversity.org/seinet/taxa/index.php?taxon=3087&taxauthid=1 SEINet, Southwestern Biodiversity, Arizona chapter] photos, distribution map[http://www.calflora.org/cgi-bin/species_query.cgi?where-calrecnum=6890 Calflora taxon report, University of California, Prunus fasciculata (Torrey) A. Gray, 1874. Desert almond ] It prefers sandy or rocky soil on dry slopes and washes, usually below {{Convert|7000|feet|-2}} elevation.
Uses
The plant is not cultivated. Some Native Americans in its limited range learned traditional ways of using it: the Cahuilla prepared the drupe as a delicacy. The wild almonds were considered a delicacy by Native Americans. The Kawaiisu found the tough twigs useful as drills in starting fires and as the front portion of arrow shafts.{{cite book |author=Moerman, Daniel E. |title=Native American Ethnobotany |publisher=Timber Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-88192-453-4 |location=Portland, Cambridge |page=442}} The seed contains too much cyanide to be edible, although there is some archaeological evidence that the ancient population of the Mojave Desert pounded the seeds into flour and leached it to make it edible.{{cite journal |last=Bond |first=Elaine Miller |date=Summer 2000 |title=Reading between the rocks: Exploring the connection between land and humans in the Granite Mountains |url=http://nrs.ucop.edu/Transect/TR18.1-S00.pdf |url-status=dead |journal=Transect |volume=18 |issue=1 |page=23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070609094659/http://nrs.ucop.edu/Transect/TR18.1-S00.pdf |archive-date=2007-06-09 |access-date=2007-08-31}}
References
{{Reflist|3}}
External links
- {{Commons-inline|Prunus fasciculata|Prunus fasciculata}}
- [http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_query?query_src=photos_index&where-taxon=Prunus+fasciculata Prunus fasciculata - U.C. CalPhoto Gallery]
- {{PFAF|Prunus fasciculata}}
{{Taxonbar|from=Q3009137}}
Category:Flora of Baja California
Category:Flora of the Southwestern United States
Category:Natural history of the Colorado Desert
Category:Natural history of the Mojave Desert
Category:Natural history of the California chaparral and woodlands
Category:Natural history of the Peninsular Ranges
Category:Natural history of the Santa Monica Mountains
Category:Natural history of the Transverse Ranges
Category:Plants described in 1851
Category:Taxa named by Asa Gray
Category:Taxa named by John Torrey
Category:Drought-tolerant plants