Addisonia 



(Plate 123) 



CRATAEGUS SUCCULENTA 

 Long-spined Thorn 



Native of the northeastern United States and Nova Scotia 

 Family Mai^aceae Appls Family 



Crataegus succulenta Schrad.; Link, Handb. 3: 78. 1831. 



A shrub or small tree of broad irregular habit and with ascending 

 branches, sometimes up to twenty-five feet tall, with gray bark and 

 shining chestnut-brown twigs; the numerous chestnut-brown thorns 

 are up to four inches long. The dark green leaves have petioles 

 from a quarter to three quarters of an inch long. The blades are 

 coriaceous, shining and glabrous above, usually slightly pubescent 

 beneath, have an obovate or rhombic-ovate outline, and measure 

 up to three and a half inches long and two and a half inches wide; 

 they are acute at the apex and wedge-shaped at the base, with the 

 margins doubly toothed, except at the very base, and lobed above 

 the middle. The flowers, which are a little less than an inch in 

 diameter, are in pubescent corymbs of a dozen or less; the calyx is 

 hairy, and its lobes lanceolate, long-pointed and with gland-tipped 

 teeth. The white petals are orbicular or nearly so. The stamens, 

 varying from ten to twenty, are usually ten, with their large anthers 

 pink or yellow. The styles are two or three. The globose pubes- 

 cent fruit is of a dark red color and shining, and has a diameter of 

 two thirds of an inch or less ; its yellow flesh is sweet and pulpy and 

 contains two or three nutlets, each about a quarter of an inch long, 

 ridged on the back, and with the inner surfaces deeply pitted. 



This is one of the earliest fruiting as it is one of the most attrac- 

 tive of our American thorns. As it grows in the New York Botan- 

 ical Garden it has a compact form, inclined to be shrubby rather 

 than tree-like, and is of rather slow growth. It bears an abundance 

 of fruit, of a rich dark red, which makes of it, in the early fall, one 

 of the most striking and handsome of our American plants. This 

 showy fruit and the rather dwarf habit, with a well-marked outhne, 

 make it of especial decorative value. The specimen from which 

 our illustration was prepared was raised in the New York Botanical 

 Garden from seed collected in Vermont by W. W. Eggleston. 



The genus Crataegus is widely distributed, mainly in the temper- 

 ate regions of the northern hemisphere, but finds its greatest de- 

 velopment in America; here it extends southward into Mexico and 

 South America along the highlands. But eastern North America 

 is the center of its distribution, where it ranges as far north as New- 

 foundland; there are also a few species in the Rocky Mountain 



