100 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. ROSACER. 
calyx-lobes and filaments ; it is often pubescent while young, and at maturity is an inch to an inch 
and a quarter in diameter, bright orange-scarlet, and covered with a glaucous bloom; the flesh is 
thin and mealy but sweet and edible; the nutlets are pointed at both ends, lunate, rounded on the 
back, with a single broad deep or sometimes shallow groove down the middle, thin brittle walls, and a 
large seed covered with a pale brown coat. 
Crategus mollis is distributed from the shores of Massachusetts Bay to northern New England 
and the province of Quebec,’ and ranges westward through central Michigan to Missouri and middle 
Tennessee, and through Arkansas to the valley of the San Antonio River in Texas, reappearing on the 
Sierra Madre near Saltillo in Mexico. It grows on the margins of swamps, along the banks of streams, 
and on prairies in rich soil; in New England it is more tree-like in habit and attains a larger size than 
the other native Hawthorns, and reaches its best development in Texas and southern Arkansas, where 
it abounds. 
The wood of Cratwgus mollis is heavy, hard, and close-grained, although not strong ; it is light 
brown or red, with thick sapwood composed of twenty-five or thirty layers of annual growth, and con- 
tains numerous very obscure medullary rays. The specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.7953, 
a cubic foot weighing 49.56 pounds. 
Crategus mollis, although it was long confounded with Crategus coccinea, was introduced into 
European gardens and was described and figured before the end of the seventeenth century,’ and it is 
no doubt this species which is called the White Thorn in early accounts of New England.* 
It is the largest and handsomest of the Scarlet Hawthorns of North America, and its rapid growth, 
tree-like habit, ample foliage, and large and abundant flowers, as well as its brilliant fruit which, how- 
ever, has the disadvantage of falling as soon as it ripens, commend it to the attention of planters. 
1 Brunet, Cat. Vég. Lig. Can. 25.— Macoun, Cat. Can. Pl. i. 147. 8 « Also, mulberries, plums, raspberries, corrance, chestnuts, fil- 
2 Mespilus Apii folio Virginiana spinis horrida, fructu amplo coc- berds, walnuts, smalnuts, hurtleberies, and hawes of whitethorne 
cineo, Plukenet, Phyt. t. 46, £.4; Alm. Bot. 249. neere as good as our cherries in England, they grow in plentie 
Mespilus spinosa, sive Oxyacantha maxima Virginiana, Hermann, here.” (Higginson, New England’s Plantation [Coll. Mass. Hist. 
Cat. Lugd. Bat. 423. — Boerhaave, Cat. Lugd. Bat. ii. 257.— Cat. Soc. i. 119].) 
Pl. Lond. p. 49. “The whitethorne affords haws as bigge as an English Cherrie, 
Mespilus aculeata pyrifolia denticulata splendens fructu insigni rutilo which is esteemed above a Cherrie for his goodnesse and pleasant- 
Virginiensis, Cat. Pl. Lond. t. 18, £. 2 (not Plukenet). nesse to the taste.” (Wood, New England’s Prospect, pt. i. chap. 5, 
Mespilus Canadensis, Sordi torminalis facie, Tournefort, Inst. 642. 20.) 
— Duhamel, Traité des Arbres, ii. 16. 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATE. 
Prats CLXXXII. Crarmeus Mois. 
A flowering branch, natural size. 
Vertical section of a flower, enlarged. 
A fruiting branch, natural size. 
A subglobose fruit, natural size. 
A fruit, part of the flesh removed, showing nutlets, enlarged. 
A nutlet, natural size. 
A nutlet divided transversely, enlarged. 
A stipule of a young branchlet, natural size. 
ee Ss ee eS 
A winter branchlet, natural size. 
