ROSACEZ, SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 95 
CRATAGUS QUERCINA. 
Haw. 
STAMENS 20; anthers dark red. Leaves oval to obovate, membranaceous, dark 
green and lustrous above, canescent below. 
Cratzgus quercina, Ashe, Jour. Elisha Mitchell Sci. Soc. Crateegus Columbiana, Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxxi. 229 
xviii. pt. i. 27 (1902). (not Howell) (1901). 
A tree, remarkable in early spring for the lustre of the white coating of tomentum on the 
branchlets and under side of the leaves, occasionally twenty-five feet in height, with a tall trunk from 
six to eight inches in diameter, and ascending branches which form a broad symmetrical head. The bark 
of the trunk, which is ight gray and broken into small closely appressed scales, becomes near the base 
of old trees deeply furrowed and nearly black. The branchlets are slender, somewhat zigzag, marked 
by many small lenticels, and armed with numerous straight or slightly curved chestnut-brown lustrous 
spines usually from an inch to an inch and a quarter in length; coated when they first appear with 
hoary tomentum, they become light red-brown and more or less villose during their first season, glabrous 
and rather darker in their second year, and ultimately pale ashy gray. The leaves vary from oval to 
obovate and are usually acute or occasionally rounded at the apex, full and rounded and gradually or 
abruptly narrowed to the entire base, and irregularly doubly serrate above, with slender glandular teeth ; 
they are conspicuously plicate when they unfold, and the upper surface, which is coated with long soft 
pale hairs, is then often dark red and the lower surface is covered with a thick coat of silvery white 
shining tomentum ; and at maturity they are thin but firm in texture, dark green, lustrous and scabrous 
above, pale and pubescent or tomentose below, and from two inches to two inches and a half long and 
broad, with slender midribs and four or five pairs of thin primary veins only slightly impressed on the 
upper side and conspicuous reticulate veinlets ; they are borne on stout tomentose petioles about half an 
inch long, and their stipules are narrow, falcate, acuminate, and finely glandular-serrate. On leading 
shoots the leaves are broadly ovate or oblong-oval, full and rounded at the base, somewhat divided into 
three or four pairs of short acute lobes, and frequently four inches long and broad, with foliaceous 
lunate coarsely glandular-dentate stipitate stipules frequently three quarters of an inch in length. 
The flowers open from the middle to the end of March when the leaves are only about one third 
grown, and are three quarters of an inch in diameter; they are produced on long slender pedicels, in 
broad many-flowered thin-branched lax corymbs covered with hoary tomentum, with oblong-obovate 
glandular-serrate villose bracts and bractlets acute or rounded and apiculate at the apex. The calyx- 
tube is narrowly obconic and coated with hoary tomentum, and the lobes are short, acute, coarsely 
glandular-serrate, tomentose on both surfaces, and reflexed after the flowers open. There are twenty 
stamens with slender elongated filaments and small dark red anthers, and five styles surrounded at the 
base by tufts of long snow-white hairs. The fruit ripens after the middle of October and hangs in 
few-fruited tomentose spreading clusters; it is subglobose but often rather longer than broad, full and 
rounded at the ends, tomentose until nearly fully grown but glabrous at maturity, dark red, marked 
by numerous large pale dots, and about one half of an inch in diameter ; the calyx is prominent, with 
a broad deep cavity and short spreading often deciduous lobes ; the flesh is thin, hght yellow, hard, and 
dry, and generally shrivels before the fruit falls. The five nutlets are rounded and usually ridged on 
the back, and about a quarter of an inch long. 
Crategus quercina inhabits the sandy bottom-lands of the Brazos River at Columbia, Texas, where 
it grows in open Live Oak forests and where it was discovered in November, 1899, by Mr. B. F. Bush. 
