ROSACEA. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 163 
CRATAGUS RAVENELII. 
Haw. 
STAMENS 20; anthers pale yellow. Leaves obovate, rounded, and abruptly short- 
pointed or acute at the broad apex. 
Cratzegus Ravenelii, Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxxiii. 122 (1902). 
A tree, twenty-five or thirty feet in height, with a trunk often fourteen or fifteen inches in diameter 
covered with thick dark brown bark deeply divided into narrow interrupted ridges broken on the surface 
into short thick plate-like scales, and stout spreading or ascending branches forming a broad open 
irregular head. The branchlets are stout, somewhat zigzag, and armed with thick straight dull gray- 
brown spines usually about an inch and a half in length; thickly coated with hoary tomentum when 
they first appear, they are dark purple or reddish brown and pubescent during their first summer and dark 
red-brown and glabrous the following season. The leaves are obovate, rounded and abruptly short- 
pointed or acute at the broad sometimes slightly lobed apex, gradually narrowed from above the middle 
to the elongated cuneate base, which is more or less undulate on the margins, and coarsely and usually 
doubly glandular-serrate above, with large bright red ultimately dark persistent glands; they are nearly 
fully grown when the flowers open about the middle of April, and are then coated with long scattered 
pale hairs which mostly soon disappear, and at maturity they are thin but firm in texture, yellow-green, 
scabrous on the upper surface, pale and pubescent on the lower surface along the slender veins, from an 
inch to an inch and a half long and about three quarters of an inch wide ; they are borne on slender 
glandular petioles winged above by the decurrent bases of the leaf-blades, tomentose at first but ulti- 
mately pubescent, and from one quarter to one half of an inch in length. The stipules vary from 
linear to lunate, and are conspicuously glandular-serrate, tomentose, and caducous. On vigorous leading 
shoots the leaves are often two inches long and an inch and a half wide, and are frequently divided 
above the middle into two or three pairs of broad lateral lobes. The flowers are about three quarters 
of an inch in diameter, in few-flowered simple tomentose corymbs, with linear glandular caducous bracts 
and bractlets. The calyx-tube is narrowly obconic, thickly coated with long white hairs, and the lobes 
are lanceolate, villose on the outer surface, glabrous on the inner surface, glandular with small red 
glands, and reflexed after anthesis. There are twenty stamens with small pale yellow anthers, and five 
styles surrounded at the base by a broad ring of pale tomentum. The fruit, which ripens early in 
October, is borne on short thick pedicels, in few-fruited drooping or spreading clusters, and is globose 
or short-oblong, bright orange-red marked by occasional large dark dots, puberulous at the ends, 
and from one third to one half of an inch in diameter ; the calyx is prominent, with a broad shallow 
cavity and enlarged spreading and appressed lobes, and the flesh is thick, yellow, and subacid. The 
five nutlets are ridged on the back, with narrow elevated ridges, pale brown, and a quarter of an inch 
long. 
Crategus Ravenelii inhabits the sand hills near Aiken, South Carolina, and in Summerville, the 
western suburb of Augusta, Georgia. 
Long confounded with Crategus flava of Aiton, Crategus Ravenelit was collected by William 
Henry Ravenel! as early as 1880, and the name of this distinguished South Carolina botanist may 
fittingly be associated with this handsome tree. 
1 See viii. 160. 
