456 BICKNELL: FERNS AND FLOWERING PLANTS OF NANTUCKET 
the case of Crataegus Bicknellu of the more eastward island. It 
should be said that these two endemic thorns are not at all closely 
related, belonging, indeed, to very different sections of their group. 
For the determinations of all the species I am indebted to Mr. 
W. W. Eggleston, who has kindly examined my entire series of 
Crataegus specimens collected prior to the present year, and 
supplied the names here employed. 
CRATAEGUS CRUS-GALLI L. 
Mrs. Owen, in her catalogue, speaking of the cockspur thorn, 
says ‘‘a hedge enclosing a tract of land west of the town, set out 
by William Henry Gardner about 1830”, and adds ‘“‘no wild plant 
has yet [1888] been reported on the island.’’ A decade later the 
status of this thorn on Nantucket had undergone considerable 
change. It was found in 1899 that low bushes and small trees 
had established themselves here and there by roadsides and in old 
fields and thickets, west and southwest of the town, extending 
as far as Hummock Pond and the western edge of Trot’s swamp. 
The species is, however, spreading very slowly, and more recent 
years have witnessed little increase in its numbers. The largest 
of these wild trees grows at the border of Millbrook Swamp and 
in 1904 was estimated to be over ten feet in height. There is also 
a colony of trees in the town, at the foot of the “Cliff,” and an old 
tree surrounded by a numerous scattered progeny among the 
pines on the site of the old O’Connell farm. This tree has a basal 
girth of thirty-three inches, and from its size would appear to be 
contemporaneous with the old Gardner trees. The original hedge 
of over three quarters of a century ago is still in existence, skirting 
a grassy tract of rather low ground which has come to be known 
as the thorn lot. The larger of these trees, gray and shaggy with 
age, must be rather more than twenty feet in height although many 
of them are scarcely over half that stature; a few are less than a 
foot in circumference near the base, but some of the trunks are 
of much greater size, the largest having a basal girth of nearly 
forty-five inches. 
This introduced species comes into bloom about two weeks 
later than any of the native Nantucket thorns; first flowers June 
17, 1908, June 15, 1910, June 16, 1911. 
