ROSACEZ:. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 67 
CRATAGUS VENUSTA. 
Haw. 
STAMENS 15 to 20; anthers pale yellow. Leaves oval to ovate, acute, coriaceous, 
dark dull green. 
Cratzgus venusta, Beadle, Bot. Gazette, xxx. 338 (1900). 
A bushy nearly glabrous tree, often twenty-five feet in height, with a short trunk a foot in 
diameter and horribly armed, like the large branches, with stout much-branched spines frequently six 
inches in length. The bark of the trunk is thick and broken into small closely appressed dark red- 
brown scales which near the base of old trees are frequently nearly black. The branches are thick, 
dark brown, ascending, and form a wide irregular rather compact head. The branchlets are stout, 
somewhat zigzag, and armed with numerous straight or slightly curved dark chestnut-brown shining 
spines which frequently point toward the base of the branch and are from an inch and a half to two 
inches and a half in length; when they first appear they are dark green more or less tinged with 
red, light reddish brown or orange-brown during their first season, and often very lustrous during 
their second summer they become dark dull gray during their third year. The leaves vary in shape 
from oval to ovate or occasionally to oblong-obovate, and are acute at the apex, gradually or abruptly 
narrowed and cuneate or rounded at the entire base, finely serrate above, with usually incurved 
glandular teeth, and frequently slightly and irregularly divided above the middle into from one to three 
pairs of short broad acute lobes; when they first unfold they are of a dark bronze color, with a few 
scattered pale caducous hairs on the upper surface, and when the flowers open about the twentieth of 
April they are yellow-green, smooth, and glabrous ; at maturity they are thick and firm in texture, dark 
dull green above, pale below, and about two inches and a half long and an inch and a half wide, with 
stout midribs deeply impressed above and from four to seven pairs of thin primary veins ; they are borne 
on stout glandular grooved petioles more or less winged above, from one half to three quarters of an inch 
in length, and in the autumn often bright red below the middle. The stipules are linear to linear- 
lanceolate, coarsely glandular-serrate, about half an inch long, and caducous. On vigorous leading 
shoots the leaves are generally broadly ovate, full and rounded at the base, deeply lobed with broad 
lobes, and often three and a half inches long and three inches wide. Late in the autumn before falling 
the leaves, especially those on leading shoots, turn deep orange or scarlet. The flowers, which are an 
inch in diameter and bad-smelling, are produced in from four to nine-flowered compact compound 
corymbs, with linear or linear-obovate bracts and bractlets which, like the inner bud-scales, are very 
coarsely glandular-serrate and turn bright red in fading. The calyx-cup is broadly obconic, and the 
lobes are gradually narrowed from broad bases, acute, and coarsely glandular-serrate often only below 
the middle. There are from fifteen to twenty but usually fifteen or seventeen stamens with slender 
elongated filaments and small pale yellow anthers, and from three to five styles surrounded at the base 
by a ring of pale hairs. The fruit ripens and falls from the first to the middle of October and is 
borne on stout pedicels often nearly an inch long, in few-fruited drooping clusters ; it is oblong, full 
and rounded at the ends, dull red often with a bright russet face, and marked by occasional large dark 
dots; the calyx is prominent, with a long tube and a broad deep cavity, and the lobes, which are not 
greatly enlarged, are spreading and often deciduous before the fruit ripens; the flesh is thick, yellow, 
dry, and mealy. The nutlets vary from three to five in number, and are thick, full and rounded on 
the back, and about a quarter of an inch long. 
