90 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. ROSACER, 
grows on the borders of streams in rich moist soil, or surrounds with dense groves low wet prairies 
in western Louisiana, where, a few miles west of Opelousas, it is the most conspicuous and beautiful 
feature of the arborescent vegetation. 
The wood of Crategus brachyacantha is heavy, hard, and very close-grained, with a satiny surface 
susceptible of receiving a beautiful polish; it contains numerous very obscure medullary rays and is 
light brown tinged with rose, the thin sapwood, composed of ten or twelve layers of annual growth, 
being lighter colored. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.6793, a cubic foot weighing 
42.33 pounds. 
Crategus brachyacantha was first collected, without flowers or fruit, by the Scotch botanist 
Thomas Drummond," but its true character was only made known fifty years later, when it was rediscoy- 
ered by Dr. Charles Mohr? near Minden in Louisiana in November, 1880. 
Crategus brachyacantha is the least widely distributed, and one of the largest and most beautiful 
representatives of the genus in North America. As it grows on the prairies of western Louisiana it is 
a striking and very attractive object, and its size, its compact well-shaped head, its lustrous foliage, its 
abundant flowers, and the color of its fruit, which is unlike that of any other Hawthorn, will make the 
Pomette Bleue, as it is called by the French Acadians of Louisiana, a valuable ornament of gardens and 
parks where the climate is sufficiently temperate for its full development. 
1 See ii. 25. 
* Charles Mohr was born in Esslingen, Wiirtemberg, December 
28, 1824, and early imbibed a taste for natural history and the woods 
from a relative employed in the forest service of Wiirtemberg, 
who made the boy his companion. In 1842 he entered the poly- 
technical school at Stuttgart, where he remained for three years, 
when, having made the acquaintance of the naturalist Kappler, an 
employee in the colonial service of Holland, he accompanied him 
as assistant to Dutch Guiana. Here, however, Mohr’s stay was 
short, owing to repeated attacks of malarial fever; and, after the 
chemical works at Brunin in Moravia, where he next found employ- 
ment, were closed in consequence of the political agitations of the 
year 1848, he sought a home in North America. The spring of 
1849 found him crossing the plains to California, where he arrived 
on foot, after a journey of one hundred and seven days from the 
Missouri River. In California he made a collection of all the 
plants he could find in flower on the foothills of the Yuba valley 
and in the neighborhood of S to. Unfortunately this collec- 
tion, which doubtless contained a number of undescribed species, 
as Dr. Mohr was among the earliest botanists to explore central 
California, was lost during his return journey across the Isthmus of 
Panama. On reaching the east, Dr. Mohr first settled in Louisville, 
Kentucky, and, after a journey in Mexico, where he thought of 
establishing himself, and where he collected Mosses especially, and 
among them several new species afterwards described by Professor 
Karl Mueller of Halle, he made his home at Mobile, Alabama. 
Here for many years he has been a successful manufacturing drug- 
gist, and has devoted his spare time to the study of the flora and 
the natural resources of the state. Being appointed, in 1880, an 
agent of the Forestry Division of the 10th Census of the United 
States to investigate the forest resources of the Gulf states, he 
prosecuted this task during several years with great vigor and in- 
telligence, traveling through all parts of the Gulf region west of 
the Appalachicola River, and obtaining the first accurate informa- 
tion about the position and distril of the southern forests, 
besides adding much to our knowledge of the range and life-his- 
tories of the trees which compose them. Later, as an agent for 
the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he again 
explored the southern forests to collect specimens for the Jesup 
Collection of North American Woods. 
southern woods under the auspices of the Louisville and Nashville 
Railroad Company for the New Orleans Exposition, and is now 
engaged, under the Forestry Division of the Department of Agri- 
culture, in studying some of the most important timber-trees of 
the south. Dr. Mohr is the author of numerous papers upon the 
botany and geology of the southern states published in the reports 
of scientific societies or in more popular form. (See Pharmaceu- 
tische Rundschau, v. No. 2, 4.) 
3 Seeds of Crategus brachyacantha were distributed by the Ar- 
nold Arboretum, in 1883, to the principal botanical establishments 
of Europe. In eastern Massachusetts the climate has proved too 
severe for it, and the young plants have all perished. 
He made a collection of 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 
Prats CLXXVII. 
A nutlet, natural size. 
eet a eo aS 
CRATHGUS BRACHYACANTHA. 
A flowering branch, natural size. 
Vertical section ofa flower, enlarged. 
A fruiting branch, natural size. 
A fruit with a part of the flesh removed, showing the nutlets, natural size. 
A nutlet divided transversely, enlarged. 
A vigorous shoot with stipules, natural size. 
A lobed leaf, natural size. 
