Prunus fasciculata, also known as wild almond, desert almond, or desert peach[2] is a spiny and woody shrub producing wild almonds, which is native to western deserts of North America.
Description
Prunus fasciculata grows up to 2 metres (6+1⁄2 feet) high, exceptionally to 3 metres (10 ft), with many horizontal (divaricate) branches, generally with thorns (spinescent), often in thickets. The bark is gray and without hairs (glabrous).[3]
This male has flowers with 10–15 stamens that are clustered with leaves in fascicles.Branches with smooth gray bark bear clusters of narrow leaves and small flowers.
The leaves are 5–20 millimetres (1⁄4–3⁄4 inch) 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 1 centimetre (1⁄2 in) long, ovoid, light brown and pubescent with thin flesh.[3][4][5]
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;[9] whence the synonym Emplectocladus fasciculata (Torr.)[10] The work was illustrated by Isaac Sprague. Torrey devised the genus Empectocladus to comprise a few desert shrubs. According to Silas C. Mason[11] the genus has
... a top so densely branched, angled and interlocked as to well merit the name Emplectocladus (Greek, "woven branch"), signifying interlocked branches ...
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.[14] In 1996 Jepson[8] 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.[15]Prunus fasciculata punctata grows in the coastal ranges as well as in the desert.[3][16][17]
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.[18] Somewhat earlier, 17,000–14,000 BP, desert almond flourished in a mixed desert and woodland ecology on the Colorado Plateau.[19]
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.[24] 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.[25]
^Bailey, 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.
^ abc"Prunus fasciculata". in Jepson Flora Project (eds.) Jepson eFlora. Jepson Herbarium; University of California, Berkeley. 2018. Retrieved 2018-07-06.
^Geological Survey of California (1880). Botany of California: Volume I: 2nd (Revised) Edition. Little, Brown, and Company. p. 168.
^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.
^Torrey, John (1854). "Plantae Fremontianae; or Descriptions of Plants Collected by Col. J. C. Fremont, in California". Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge Volume 6 Paper 1. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. The contents of this volume are stated in The American Catalogue of Books (1856). London: Sampson Low, Son & Co. 1856. p. 59. The paper, however, had already been published independently in April, 1853, according to Karslake, Frank (1971). Book-Auction Records. London, New York and Edinburgh: Dawsons of Pall Mall. p. 1050.
^Mason, Silas C. (1911). "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". Bulletins of the Bureau of Plant Industry Nos. 192 to 197 Inclusive 1910-1911. Vol. XXV. Washington: Government Printing Office. p. 24.
^Bentham, George; Hooker, Joseph Dalton (1865). Genera plantarum ad exemplaria imprimis in herbariis kewensibus servata definita Volume I Part II. London: Lovell Reeve & Co. p. 614.
^"Folia minuta, spathulata, e gemmis subglobosis quasi fasciculata ...."
^"Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1874)". 10:70. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Anderson, R. Scott; Betancourt, Julio L.; Mead, Jim I.; Hevly, Richard H.; Adam, David P. (2000). "Middle- and late-Wisconsin paleobotanic and paleoclimatic records from the southern Colorado Plateau, USA". Palaeo. 155 (1–2): 45. Bibcode:2000PPP...155...31A. doi:10.1016/s0031-0182(99)00093-0. The article is available as a .pdf file at [1].
