252 THE EVOLUTION OF OUR NATIVE FRUITS 



It is in cultivation as an ornamental plant (" Pyrus 

 coronaria odorata"), but it appears never to have been 

 grown for the economic uses of its fruit. The fruit 

 is always distinctly flattened endwise, clear yellowish 

 green at maturity, without spots or dots ; stem very 

 slender, but varying in length, the cavity small and 

 regular; basin (at apex of fruit) symmetrical, rather 

 deep but broad, and marked by regular corrugations, 

 the calyx small and smooth. Various aspects of this 

 crab apple are shown in Figs. 42-45. 



2. The wild or narrow -leaved crab of the Southern 

 states (Pyrus angustifolia, Aiton). Leaves lanceolate- 

 oblong to elliptic, small, varying from almost entire 

 in f ,he inflorescence to bluntly and mostly sparsely 

 dentate -serrate, obtuse or bluntish (only rarely half- 

 acute), stiff and firm and polished above, as if half- 

 evergreen, on short (usually an inch or less) and 

 hard, smooth or nearly smooth petioles ; flowers habit- 

 ually smaller than in the last, on very slender but 

 shorter, smooth pedicels, the calyx smooth, or essen- 

 tially so, on the outside. A small, hard-wooded tree, 

 growing from Pennsylvania to Tennessee (and south- 

 ern Illinois?) and Florida. Dr. Gattinger, of Nash- 

 ville, Tenn., writes me that the species is "confined 

 to the siliceous sub -carboniferous formation, and I 

 have never seen it on the silurian limestones around 

 Nashville." Pyrus angustifolia is more easily confused 

 with P. coronaria than the western forms of crabs are. 

 The best character of distinction between P. angusti- 

 folia and P. coronaria, it seems to me, is the thick, 

 half -evergreen, shining leaves of the former a char- 

 acter which appears to have been omitted in the later 

 books. I presume that it was this character of leaves 



