ROSACEA 



421 



drooping clusters, subglobose, scarlet, covered with a glaucous bloom, and ^-f in 

 diameter; flesh soft, sweet, and edible; nutlets 3-5, narrowed and acute at the ends, 

 prominently ridged on the back, with a high broadly grooved ridge, j-jq' long. 



A tree, sometimes 20 high, with a trunk 7'-8' in diameter, covered with dark 

 gray or brown scaly bark, ascending or slightly spreading branches forming a narrow 

 irregular head, and stout branchlets armed with numerous slender bright chestnut- 

 brown lustrous ultimately gray spines 2'-2^' long. 



Distribution. Open woods and the borders of fields and roads, western North 

 Carolina, usually at elevations of 2000-3000 above the sea. 



55. Crataegus lacera, Sarg. 



Leaves rhomboidal to broadly ovate or rarely obovate, acute at the apex, broadly 

 cuneate and entire at the base, divided above the middle into numerous acute lobes, 



A/xrj& 



and coarsely often doubly serrate above, with straight glandular teeth, when they 

 unfold coated below with thick hoary tomentum and villose above, nearly fully grown 

 when the flowers open about the 20th of April and then glabrous on the lower sur- 

 face and covered on the upper surface with short scattered pale hairs, and at ma- 

 turity glabrous, light yellow-green, paler below than above, thin but firm in texture, 

 about ly long and ly wide, with thin yellow midribs and few remote primary veins; 

 their petioles slender, villose, becoming glabrous or puberulous, slightly winged at 

 the apex, often red toward the base, \'-^' long; on vigorous shoots broadly ovate, 

 often deeply 3-lobed, very coarsely serrate, 3' 4' long and broad, with lunate 

 long-pointed coarsely glandular-serrate stipules sometimes ^' in length. Flo"wers 

 ^' in diameter, on long slender pedicels, in sparingly villose few-flowered compound 

 corymbs; calyx-tube narrowly obconic, glabrous, the lobes linear-lanceolate, elon- 

 gated, coarsely glandular-serrate, glabrous on the outer surface, villose on the inner 

 surface; stamens 20; anthers small, rose color; styles 4 or 5. Fruit ripening toward 

 the end of October, on short stout glabrous pedicels, in erect few-fruited clusters, 

 short-oblong, full and rounded at the ends, bright cherry-red, lustrous, marked by 

 occasional large dark dots, about ^' long; calyx only slightly enlarged, with small 

 nearly triangular villose spreading lobes mostly deciduous before the fruit ripens; 

 flesh thick, orange color; nutlets 3-5, thin, broad, narrowed at the ends, only slightly 

 ridged on the rounded back, light brown, ^q' long. 



