ROSACEA. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 57 
CRATAGGUS EDITA. 
‘Haw. 
STAMENS 20; anthers rose-colored. Leaves oblong-obovate, acute, scabrous. 
Cratzgus edita, Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxxiii. 110 (1902). 
A tree, in low moist ground sometimes forty feet in height, with a trunk a foot in diameter free of 
branches for eighteen or twenty feet and covered with dark red-brown fissured scaly bark, and stout 
horizontal branches forming a broad rounded symmetrical head ; or on the drier soil of low hills much 
smaller and generally from twenty to twenty-five feet in height. The branchlets are slender, nearly 
straight, marked by numerous large oblong dark lenticels, and armed with few scattered stout straight 
chestnut-brown ultimately dull gray spines which vary from one to two inches in length; when they 
first appear the branchlets are orange-brown and villose, and in their second year they are dull red-brown 
and often sparingly villose, becoming dull light gray-brown during the followmg year. The leaves are 
oblong-obovate or rarely oval, acute at the gradually narrowed apex, gradually narrowed from near the 
middle and cuneate at the entire base, and coarsely and often doubly serrate above, with glandular 
teeth ; when the flowers open they are lustrous and scabrous above, with short rigid pale hairs, and are 
pubescent or puberulous below, particularly on the slender midribs and remote slightly raised primary 
veins ; and at maturity they are dark green, lustrous, and slightly roughened on the upper surface, 
pale yellow-green and scabrous on the lower surface, from an inch and a half to two inches in 
length and from one half of an inch to an inch in width; they are borne on stout grooved petioles 
winged above by the decurrent bases of the leaf-blades, villose, ultimately pubescent or puberulous, and 
from one third to one half of an inch long. The stipules are linear, glandular-serrate, villose, and 
caducous. On vigorous leading shoots the leaves are often slightly divided into lateral lobes, more 
coarsely serrate than the leaves of fertile branches, and sometimes three inches long and an inch and a 
half wide, with stouter and more broadly margined petioles. The flowers, which open from the 
fifteenth to the twentieth of April, vary from one half to two thirds of an inch in diameter, and are 
produced in villose few-flowered slender-branched compound narrow corymbs, with lnear glandular 
caducous bracts and bractlets. The calyx-tube is narrowly obconic, glabrous or slightly villose below, 
and the lobes are linear-lanceolate, usually entire or obscurely glandular-serrate, glabrous on the outer 
surface, puberulous on the inner surface, and reflexed after the flowers open. There are twenty 
stamens with small rose-colored anthers, and two or three styles. The fruit ripens late in October or 
early in November, and is borne on stout glabrous or slightly villose pedicels usually about one half 
of an inch in length, in few-fruited drooping clusters ; it is short-oblong, full and rounded at the ends, 
slightly pruinose, dull green tinged with red, from one quarter to one third of an inch in length, and 
surmounted by the now prominent calyx-tube with a broad cavity and elongated spreading lobes which are 
puberulous on the inner surface and often deciduous before the ripening of the fruit; the flesh is very 
thin, green, dry, and hard. The two or three nutlets are thick, prominently ridged on the back, with 
broad low rounded ridges, light brown, and a quarter of an inch long. 
Crategus edita, which is one of the tallest and most beautiful of the Thorn-trees of the southern 
states, inhabits low wet woods and the borders of streams, where it grows to its largest size, and the 
Oak and Pine forests which cover dry hills, and is distributed from the valley of the Sabine River in 
Texas to western Louisiana.' It was first distinguished in April, 1901, by W. M. Canby, B. F. Bush, 
and C. 8. Sargent, near Marshall, Texas. 
1 Near Shreveport, Louisiana, Canby, Bush, and Sargent, April collected by me at Opelousas, Louisiana, March 29, 1900, is proba- 
21, 1901. A specimen of Crategus, with very young buds only, bly of this species. 
