ROSACEA 



487 



ripe fruit; flesh thin; nutlets 1-3, full and rounded at the ends, rounded and pro- 

 minently ridged and grooved on the back, about ^' long. 



A tree, occasionally 20 high, with a trunk rarely 6'-8' in diameter, branches 

 spreading nearly at right angles and forming a wide irregular open head, and slender 



more or less zigzag often contorted branchlets covered at first with long pale hairs, 

 light red or pale orange-brown and usually puberulous in their first winter, ulti- 

 mately light brown or ashy gray, and armed with stout straight chestnut-brown 

 spines I'-l^' long. 



Distribution. Borders of streams and swamps or on hummocks in Pine barrens 

 throuorh the coast region of the south Atlantic states from southern Virginia to cen- 

 tral Florida, and westward to southern Arkansas and the valley of the Trinity River, 

 Texas; most abundant and of its largest size in southern Arkansas and western 

 Louisiana. 



117. Crataegus cordata, Ait. Washington Thorn. 



Leaves broadly ovate to triangular, acute or acuminate, truncate, slightly wedge- 

 shaped, rounded or cordate at the entire base, and coarsely serrate above, with acute 

 spreading often gland-tipped teeth, and more or less incisely lobed, or often 3-lobed, 

 tinged with red when they unfold and sparingly pilose above, with long pale cadu- 

 cous hairs, fully grown when the flowers open at the end of May, and at maturity 

 thin but firm, dark green and lustrous above, pale below, or rarely pubescent on the 

 lower surface, especially on the conspicuous orange-colored midribs and primary 

 veins, l^'-2' long, I'-l^' wide, turning late in the autumn bright scarlet and 

 orange; their petioles slender, terete, glabrous, f'-l^ long. Flowers on slender 

 pedicels, in rather compact many-flowered glabrous corymbs ; calyx-tube broadly 

 obconic, glabrous, the .lobes short, nearly triangular, entire, abruptly contracted at 

 the apex into minute points, glabrous on the outer, pubescent on the inner surface, 

 ciliate on the margins; stamens 20; anthers rose color; styles 2-5, surrounded at 

 the base by conspicuous tufts of pale hairs. Fruit ripening in September and October 

 and persistent on the branches until late in the spring of the following year, 

 depressed-globose, scarlet, lustrous, ^' in diameter; calyx deciduous from the ripe 

 fruit, leaving a wide circular scar surrounding the persistent erect tips of the carpels; 



