ROSACEZ:. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 17 
CRATZIGUS BRAZORIA. 
Haw. 
STAMENS 20; anthers dark red. Leaves oval to obovate, acute, thin, dark green, 
and lustrous. 
Cratzgus Brazoria, Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxxi. 233 (1901). 
A tree, from twenty to twenty-five feet in height, with a tall straight stem eight or ten inches 
in diameter, and numerous ascending branches forming a handsome symmetrical round-topped head. 
The bark near the base of large stems is thick, deeply furrowed, and nearly black, and on smaller stems 
and large branches it is ashy gray, and covered with smooth closely appressed scales. The branchlets 
are slender, slightly zigzag, marked by small oblong pale lenticels, and unarmed or occasionally armed 
with long thin gray thorns; covered with matted pale hairs when they first appear, the branchlets 
soon become glabrous, and during their first season they are light red-brown and lustrous, and ashy 
gray in their second year. The leaves vary from oval to obovate and are acute or acuminate at the 
apex, gradually narrowed, cuneate and entire at the base, and coarsely and irregularly glandular- 
serrate above, with straight spreading teeth; they are coated with hoary tomentum and often bright 
red as they unfold, and are nearly fully grown when the flowers open from the middle to the end of 
March, when they are covered with short soft pale hairs which are most abundant on the under side of 
the thin midribs, and three or four pairs of primary veins; and at maturity they are thin and firm in 
texture, glabrous, dark green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, from two 
inches to two inches and a half long and from an inch and a quarter to an inch and a half wide; they 
are borne on slender slightly grooved petioles, more or less winged toward the apex, at first tomentose 
but ultimately glabrous or puberulous, and from one half to three quarters of an inch in length. The 
stipules are foliaceous, somewhat falcate, acuminate, usually entire, villose, and about a quarter of an inch 
long. On vigorous leading shoots the leaves are broadly ovate or oblong, full and rounded or broadly 
cuneate at the base, very coarsely dentate, and often five inches long and two inches and a half wide; 
and their stipules are foliaceous, lunate, short-pointed, sometimes coarsely glandular-serrate, long-stalked, 
and frequently half an inch in length. The flowers are three quarters of an inch in diameter, on 
slender elongated pedicels, in broad thin-branched slightly villose corymbs, with long linear-obovate 
acuminate glandular villose bracts and bractlets. The calyx-tube is narrowly obconic and coated with 
long matted pale hairs, and the lobes are narrow, acuminate, obscurely glandular-serrate or nearly 
entire, villose on both surfaces, and reflexed after the flowers open. There are twenty stamens with 
slender filaments and small dark red anthers, and five styles surrounded at the base by a thin ring 
of hoary tomentum. The fruit, which ripens after the first of October, and is borne in spreading or 
drooping few-fruited clusters, is subglobose or often rather longer than broad, bright canary-yellow, 
marked by occasional dark dots, and from one third to one half of an inch in length; the calyx is 
prominent, with a broad deep cavity and lobes which usually disappear before the fruit ripens; the 
flesh is thin, light yellow, rather dry, but sweet and edible. The five nutlets are rounded and grooved 
on the back, and nearly a quarter of an inch in length. 
Crategus Brazoria inhabits low rich woods near the banks of the Brazos River in Brazoria, 
Texas, where I first saw it on March 25, 1900, and where subsequently it has been collected several 
times by Mr. B. F. Bush. 
