138 Rhodora  . "cns o LE 
slightly villose and dark green tinged with red when the flowers open ; 
at maturity thin, smooth, and dark yellow-green on the upper surface, 
paler on the lower surface, 3-5 cm. long, 2.5-3 cm. wide, with very 
slender yellow midribs and thin veins extending obliquely to the 
points of the lobes; petioles slender, often slightly wing-margined at 
the apex, obscurely grooved, 1.5-2 cm. long; stipules linear to lance- 
olate, bright red, often 1 cm. in length; on vigorous shoots leaves 
often pendant against the branch on stout winged glandular red peti- 
oles, more deeply lobed than the leaves of fertile branchlets, long- 
pointed, mostly truncate at the base, coarsely serrate, with straight 
teeth, 7-8 cm. long, 6-7 cm. wide, with stout bright rose colored 
midribs. Flowers 1.5 cm. in diameter on slender pedicels, in broad 
many-flowered thin-branched glabrous corymbs; bracts and bractlets 
linear to lanceolate, glabrous, bright rose color, large. and conspicu- 
ous; calyx-tube broadly obconic, bright red before anthesis like the 
narrow elongated acuminate mostly entire gland-tipped lobes; sta- 
mens 5-10; anthers large, bright red; styles 3, surrounded at the 
base by a broad ring of pale tomentum. Fruit drooping on slender 
pedicels, in many-fruited clusters, oblong, full and round at the ends, 
scarlet, lustrous, marked by minute pale dots, 1.3—1.5 cm. in length, 
9-12 mm. in diameter; calyx only slightly enlarged, with a small 
shallow cavity and reflexed lobes, entire or slightly and irregularly 
dentate towards the base, bright red on the upper side below the 
middle, mostly deciduous from the ripe fruit; flesh thin, yellow- 
green; nutlets 5, large for the size of the fruit, acute at the ends, 
prominently ridged on the broad back, with a high often grooved 
ridge, about 7 mm. long. 
A shrub usually about 1 m. in height with nearly erect stems 
forming small thickets and covered with ashy gray bark, and stout 
zigzag branchlets dark dull red when they first appear, red-brown and 
very lustrous and marked by large pale lenticels during their first 
season, and ashy gray the following year, and armed with numerous 
very stout straight or slightly curved shining red-brown ultimately 
. 
gray spines 3—4 cm. in length. Flowers about May 2oth. Fruit 
ripens early in September and soon falls. 
MassacHusETTS: Upland rocky pastures, Berlin, /. G. Jack, May 
1900, West Boylston, Mrs. J. E. Thayer and C: S. Sargent, May and 
September 1901 and 1902. Common. 
Easily distinguished in early spring by the bright red color of the 
young leaves, bud-scales and bracts, which make it conspicuous from 
a long distance, and in the autumn by the large drooping leaves 
with their bright rose colored midribs on the ends of the branches, 
and by the small very lustrous early ripening fruits. 
