26 HOUGH'S AMERICAN WOODS. 



ing with difficulty in thin papery scales. It is particularly handsome in 

 late summer and autumn when the bunches of bright red berries contrast 

 strongly with the dark green, or when frost-bitten orange-colored, leaves. 



HABITAT. A strictly boreal tree being found in southern Greenland, 

 Labrador, Canada and only in the more elevated regions of north-east- 

 ern United States. On the western side of the continent it is found 

 from Alaska southward among the mountains to New Mexico. 



PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. The wood of the Mountain Ash is light, not 

 strong, close-grained, and of a light brown color with whitish sap-wood. 

 Specific Gravity, 0.5928; Percentage of Ash, 0.35; Relative Approximate 

 Fuel Value, 0.5908; Coefficient of Elasticity, G2GOO ; Modulus of Rup- 

 ture, 445; Resistance to Longitudinal Pressure, 383; Resistance to Inden- 

 tation, 107; Weight of a Cubic Foot in Pounds, 3G.94. 



USES. Very little if any use is made of this tree save for ornamental 

 purposes, and there it holds a well-deserved and long-recognized high 

 rank. Indeed scarcely a more striking and more beautiful tree can 

 be found in autumn than the Mountain Ash when in full fruit, and its 

 abundance in door-yards through New England and many sections in 

 the north attest its long-time popularity. 



MEDICINAL PROPERTIES are not known of this species. 



GENUS CRATAEGUS, L. 



Leaves simple and generally lobed; stipules free, and, as with the awl-shaped 

 bracts, deciduous. Flowers mostly in corymbs, white or rarely rose-colored; calyx 

 urn-shaped with limb 5-cleft, persistent; petals roundish; ovaries 1-5, inferior; styles 

 as many as the ovaries. Fruit a fleshy, drupe-like pome containing 1-5 hard 

 I-seeded carpels and bearing on the summit the persistent calyx-lobes. 



Small trees and shrubs armed with thorns, and petioles, calyx-teeth, etc., often 

 beset with glands. 



(Crataegus is from the Greek KparoS, strength, in allusion to the nature of the 

 wood.) 



85. CRATAEGUS CRUS-GALLI, L. 

 COCK-SPUR THORN, NEWCASTLE THORN*. 



Ger., Glanzende Mispel ; Fr., Nefier pied de coc ; Sp., Espino del 



espolon de gallo. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS: Leaves thick, 1-4 in. in length, wedge-obovateoroblanceo- 

 late, tapering to a short petiole, dark lustrus green above, paler beneath, sharply ser- 

 rate towards the apex, entire at base; stipules minutely glandular-serrate, falling 

 away early: thorns long (2-4 in.) and slender, occasionally branched. Flowers, when 

 the leaves are fully expanded, in mostly glabrous elongated corymbs of several each, 

 from short lateral branchlets, scarcely j in. across, with lobes entire or minutely 

 glandular-serrate, persistent; petals white; pistils 1-5, hairy at base; bracts minutely 

 glandular-serrate, falling away early. Frvit, subglobose or occasionally pyriform, 

 about \ in. in diameter, dull red, with thin flesh and thick-shelled nutlets three- 

 grooved on the back and rounded at both ends. 



(The specific name. OrtM-flaRi, is the Latin for leg of the cock, likening the thorns 

 of the tree to the spurs of the cock.) 



