ROSACE, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 79 
CRATAIGUS LETTERMANI. 
Haw. 
STAMENS 10; anthers white. Leaves obovate to broadly oval. 
Cratzgus Lettermani, Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxxi. 220 (1901). 
A tree, eighteen or twenty feet in height, with a trunk six or eight inches in diameter covered 
with thin dark brown or nearly black bark separating freely into small plate-like scales, and often armed 
with thin much-branched spines frequently seven or eight inches long, and rather small erect branches 
forming a wide open head. The branchlets are slender, nearly straight, marked by minute pale lenticels, 
and armed with stout straight bright red-brown shining spines from an inch and a half to two inches 
in length ; coated when they first appear with hoary tomentum, they are dull red-brown and villose or 
pubescent during their first season, and dark gray-brown the following year. The leaves are obovate, 
acute or acuminate or rounded and short-pointed at the apex, gradually narrowed from near the middle 
and cuneate at the mostly entire base, coarsely and often doubly serrate, with straight or incurved 
glandular teeth, and frequently slightly and irregularly divided above the middle into three or four 
pairs of short acute lobes; when they unfold they are strongly plicate and covered with a thick coat of 
hoary tomentum, and when the flowers open in May they are nearly half grown, roughened above by 
short pale hairs and pubescent below, and in the autumn they are about two inches long and an inch 
and a half wide, thick and firm in texture, bright yellow-green and scabrous on the upper surface, 
and pale and pubescent on the lower surface along the stout midribs, four or five pairs of primary 
veins, conspicuously forked secondary veins, and reticulate veinlets ; they are borne on stout grooved 
petioles more or less winged above the middle by the decurrent bases of the leaf-blades, at first 
tomentose, ultimately pubescent or nearly glabrous, and usually about three quarters of an inch in 
length. The stipules are linear, glandular-serrate, tomentose, about a quarter of an inch long, and 
caducous. On vigorous leading shoots the leaves are broadly oval, acute or acuminate, more coarsely 
serrate than the leaves of fertile branches, from two inches and a half to three inches long and from 
two to two and a half inches wide, with broad lunate coarsely glandular-serrate stipules frequently 
half an inch in length. The flowers are about three quarters of an inch in diameter, and are produced 
in compact many-flowered compound thick-branched tomentose corymbs, with linear glandular-serrate 
caducous bracts and bractlets. The calyx-tube is narrowly obconic and tomentose, and the lobes are 
narrow, acuminate, finely glandular-serrate, villose, and reflexed after the flowers open. There are ten 
stamens with small anthers, and five styles surrounded at the base by a broad ring of hoary tomentum. 
The fruit, which ripens early in October and is borne on stout pubescent pedicels, in few-fruited 
spreading or drooping clusters, is subglobose or occasionally slightly obovate, full and rounded and 
puberulous at the ends, dull orange-red, marked by large pale dots, and about half an inch in 
diameter ; the calyx-cavity is broad and shallow, and the lobes, which often fall before the fruit ripens, 
are enlarged, coarsely glandular-serrate, and reflexed ; the flesh is thin, yellow, dry, and mealy. The 
five nutlets are acute at the ends, very prominently ridged on the back, with high rounded ridges, 
dark brown, and a quarter of an inch long. 
Crategus Lettermani grows in low rich soil among Oaks and Hickories in situations where it is 
often inundated during several weeks in winter, near Allenton, Missouri, where it was discovered in 
1882 by Mr. George W. Letterman.’ 
1 George Washington Letterman (1884), the son of John and County, Pennsylvania, of a family which had lived for three gen- 
Charlotte (Blair) Letterman, was born near Bellefonte, Centre erations in Pennsylvania, his father being of Dutch and his mother 
