ROSACEZ. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA 141 
CRATAEGUS GEMMOSA. 
Haw. 
STAMENS 20; anthers rose color. Leaves broadly oval or rarely obovate. 
Cratzegus gemmosa, Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxxiii. 119 (1902). 
A tree, occasionally thirty feet in height, with a tall trunk ten or twelve inches in diameter covered 
with dark brown scaly bark, and stout spreading or ascending branches forming a broad rather open 
symmetrical head ; or often shrubby and frequently flowering when only a few feet tall. The branchlets 
are stout, zigzag, glabrous, marked by numerous oblong pale lenticels, and armed with straight or 
slightly curved thick chestnut-brown spines usually about two inches in length; dark orange-brown 
when they first appear, the branchlets are bright red-brown or gray-brown and lustrous for two or 
three years, and ultimately become dark brown. The winter-buds are globose, and sometimes nearly 
a quarter of an inch in diameter, with broad ovate rounded shining bright red-brown outer scales pale 
and scarious on the margins. The leaves are broadly oval or rarely broadly obovate, acute or 
acuminate, gradually narrowed and cuneate or occasionally rounded at the base, sharply and usually 
doubly serrate from below the middle, with straight glandular teeth, and often slightly lobed toward 
the apex, with short acute lobes; dark red and villose as they unfold, they are nearly fully grown when 
the flowers open from the middle to the end of May, and are then membranaceous, light yellow-green, 
nearly glabrous above and pale and villose below, and at maturity they are thick and firm in texture, 
very dark dull green on the upper surface, and pale and pubescent on the lower surface along the 
stout yellow midribs which are deeply impressed and occasionally puberulous on the upper side and 
along the four or five pairs of slender primary veins extending obliquely to the apex of the leaf; they 
vary from an inch and a half to two inches and a half in length and from an inch to two inches in width, 
and are borne on stout deeply grooved villose or pubescent petioles more or less winged above, glandular 
while young, with minute bright red caducous glands, usually pk in the autumn, and from one quarter 
to one half of an inch in length. The stipules are linear, acuminate, glandular, bright red, and 
caducous. On vigorous leading shoots the leaves are more coarsely serrate, frequently divided into 
short acute lateral lobes, and often four inches long and three inches wide, with rose-colored midribs 
and stout spreading primary veins; and their stipules are often lunate, acuminate, coarsely glandular- 
serrate, and frequently a quarter of an inch long. The flowers vary from one half to three quarters 
of an inch in diameter, and are produced in slender-branched open compound villose many-flowered 
corymbs, with lanceolate or oblanceolate acuminate glandular-serrate conspicuous bracts and bractlets. 
The calyx-tube is narrowly obconic, more or less villose, with matted pale hairs, or nearly glabrous, and 
the lobes are lanceolate, acuminate, glabrous or villose on the outer surface, villose on the inner surface, 
coarsely glandular-serrate, with bright red glands, and reflexed after anthesis. There are twenty 
stamens with small rose-colored anthers, and two or three styles surrounded at the base by a narrow 
ring of pale tomentum. The fruit, which ripens early in October and becomes very succulent just 
before it is ready to fall, is borne in drooping many-fruited glabrous or puberulous clusters ; it is 
subglobose or short-oblong, scarlet, lustrous, half an inch in diameter when fully ripe, and crowned by 
the persistent calyx with an elongated narrow tube and reflexed villose lobes which are bright red 
toward the base on the upper side; the flesh is thick, yellow, sweet, and succulent, and only slightly 
adheres to the two or usually three nutlets. These are broad and flat and a quarter of an inch in 
length, with prominent rounded dorsal ridges, and are penetrated on each of the inner faces by a short 
broad deep cavity. 
