ROSACEA. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 179 
CRATAIGUS NITIDA. 
Haw. 
STAMENS 15 to 20; anthers yellow. Leaves lanceolate to oblong-obovate, acuminate, 
coriaceous, dark green, and lustrous. 
Cratzgus nitida, Sargent, Bot. Gazette, xxxi. 231 (1901).— Crataegus viridis, var. nitida, Britton & Brown, JU. FV. 
Britton, Man. 520. ii. 242 (1897). 
Crategus viridis, Sargent, Silva N. Am. iv. 109 (in part) 
(not Linnzeus) (1892). 
A nearly glabrous tree, often thirty feet in height, with a tall straight trunk sometimes eighteen 
inches in diameter covered with close dark bark broken into thick plate-like scales, and stout spreading 
lower branches and erect upper branches forming a broad open rather irregular head. The branchlets 
are slender, nearly straight, marked by small pale lenticels, and are unarmed or armed with occasional 
straight thin bright chestnut-brown lustrous spines from an inch to an inch and a half in length ; 
during their first and second seasons they are bright orange-brown and lustrous, becoming pale reddish 
brown during their third year, and ultimately ashy gray. The leaves vary from lanceolate to oblong- 
obovate, and are acuminate, abruptly or gradually narrowed and cuneate at the entire base, coarsely 
serrate above, with straight or incurved glandular teeth, and often more or less divided into two or 
three pairs of broad acute lobes; when they unfold they are membranaceous, slightly villose along the 
upper side of the midribs, with scattered pale caducous hairs, and dark red; soon becoming green and 
lustrous, at maturity they are thick and coriaceous, dark green and very lustrous on the upper surface, 
pale and dull on the lower surface, from two to three inches long and from an inch to an inch and a 
half wide, with prominent midribs usually red on the lower side and few thin prominent. primary 
veins slightly impressed above and generally running to the points of the lobes; they are borne on 
stout grooved glandular petioles which are more or less winged above, villose while young on the upper 
side, and from one half to three quarters of an inch in length. On vigorous leading shoots the leaves 
are frequently five inches long and two and a half inches wide, and more deeply lobed than the leaves 
of fertile branchlets, with lunate, stipitate, coarsely glandular-serrate stipules occasionally half an inch 
in length. The flowers, which open early in May when the leaves are nearly fully grown and are 
about three quarters of an inch in diameter, are borne on slender elongated pedicels in broad compound 
very thin-branched many-flowered corymbs, with minute linear bracts and bractlets. The calyx-tube 
is narrowly obconic, and the lobes are narrow, elongated, acuminate, entire or sparingly and irregularly 
glandular-serrate, and reflexed after the flowers open. There are from fifteen to twenty stamens with 
slender pale yellow anthers, and from two to five styles. The fruit rpens at the end of October, 
and hangs on slender elongated pedicels, in many-fruited drooping clusters; it is oblong, full and 
rounded at the ends, dull brick red, pruinose, with a slight glaucous bloom, marked by small dark dots, 
from one half to five eighths of an inch in length and about one third of an inch in thickness ; the 
calyx-cavity is deep and narrow, and the lobes, which are only slightly enlarged, are dark red at the 
base on the upper side, usually erect and often deciduous before the fruit ripens; the flesh is thick, 
yellow, dry, and mealy. The nutlets, which vary from two to five in number, are rounded and ridged 
on the back, with low broad rounded ridges, light-colored, and a quarter of an inch in length. 
Crategus nitida is a common tree in the woods which cover the higher parts of the bottoms of 
the Mississippi River in Illinois opposite the city of St. Louis, where it was first collected in June, 
