ROSACEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 55 
CRATZiGUS BUSHII. 
Haw. 
STAMENS 20; anthers rose-colored. Leaves obovate to elliptical, broad and rounded 
or acute at the apex. 
Cratzgus Bushii, Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxxiii. 109 (1902). 
A tree, from fifteen to twenty feet in height, with a trunk eight or ten inches in diameter covered 
with dark red-brown fissured bark broken on the surface into closely appressed scales, and small 
spreading branches forming a broad open irregular head. The branchlets are slender, nearly straight, 
marked by occasional oblong pale lenticels, and unarmed or sparingly armed with stout straight 
chestnut-brown spines varying from an inch and a half to an inch and three quarters in length ; when 
they first appear they are orange-green and glabrous, becoming bright red-brown and lustrous during 
their first season and dull gray-brown in their second year. The leaves are obovate, broad and rounded 
or acute at the apex, or elliptical and acute, gradually narrowed from near the middle, cuneate and 
entire at the base, and coarsely serrate above, with straight gland-tipped teeth; when they unfold they 
are dark green above, pale below, and villose, with short white hairs on both sides of the midribs and 
veins ; nearly fully grown when the flowers open about the twentieth of April, they are then dark green 
and very lustrous on the upper surface and glabrous, with the exception of a few hairs on the upper 
side of the midribs, and at maturity they are coriaceous, very lustrous, glabrous, from an inch and a 
quarter to an inch and a half in length and from half an inch to an inch in width, with stout yellow 
midribs deeply impressed above and few slender prominent primary veins; they are borne on stout 
grooved villose ultimately glabrous petioles margined above and usually about half an inch long. The 
stipules are linear-lanceolate or oblanceolate, glandular-serrate or entire, about a quarter of an inch 
long, and caducous. On vigorous leading shoots the leaves are usually elliptical, acute, coarsely 
serrate, and frequently three inches long and an inch and a half wide, with stouter and more broadly 
winged petioles than those of the leaves of fertile branches. The flowers vary from three quarters of 
an inch to an inch in diameter and are produced in broad compound many-flowered glabrous corymbs, 
with linear entire caducous bracts and bractlets. The calyx-tube is broadly obconic and glabrous, and 
the lobes are elongated, linear-lanceolate, entire or occasionally shghtly dentate, and reflexed after 
anthesis. There are twenty stamens with large bright rose-colored anthers, and two or three styles 
surrounded at the base by conspicuous tufts of white hairs. The fruit, which ripens late in October or 
in November, is borne on slender pedicels about half an inch long, in few-fruited drooping clusters ; it 
is oblong, full and rounded at the ends, green tinged with dull red, and a third of an inch in length, 
with a broad shallow calyx-cavity and only slightly enlarged erect and incurved lobes which mostly fall 
before the fruit ripens; the flesh is thin, green, dry, and hard. The two or three nutlets are broad, 
prominently ridged on the back, with high rounded ridges, and a quarter of an inch long. 
Crategus Bushii inhabits rich upland woods near Fulton on the Red River in southern Arkansas, 
where it was discovered in April, 1900, by Mr. B. F. Bush.’ 
This tree, one of the most beautiful of the American Thorns, with its large and abundant pure 
white flowers and lustrous leaves, is fittingly associated with the name of its discoverer, who for many 
years has industriously explored the forests and prairies of the region immediately west of the lower 
Mississippi River. 
1 See vii. 110. 
