ROSACES 397 



usually ripening in July, on pedicels |'-f ' long, in short nearly erect or spreading racemes, 

 short-oblong or ovoid, dark blue, more or less covered with a glaucous bloom, \' to nearly 

 I' in diameter, sweet and succulent. 



A tree, occasionally 30-40 high, with a tall trunk 12'-14' in diameter, small erect 

 and spreading branches forming an oblong open head, and slender branchlets glabrous, pu- 

 bescent or puberulous when they first appear, bright red-brown and usually glabrous dur- 

 ing their first season, rather darker in their second year, and ultimately dark gray-brown; 

 more often a large or small shrub. Winter-buds ovoid to ellipsoidal, acute or acuminate, 



Fig. 352 



dark chestnut-brown, glabrous or puberulous, '-$' long, scales of the inner ranks ovate, 

 acute, brightly colored, coated with pale silky hairs, -'-' l n g- Bark about \' thick, 

 smooth or slightly fissured, and light brown slightly tinged with red. Wood heavy, hard, 

 close-grained, light brown. The nutritious fruit was an important article of food with 

 the Indians of northwestern America, who formerly gathered and dried it in large quantities. 

 Distribution. Valley of the Yukon River (near Dawson) and Wrangell, Alaska, and 

 southward to the coast region of British Columbia, and southward in Washington and 

 Oregon possibly to northern California, ranging east in the United States to western 

 Idaho, and probably to the northern Rocky Mountain region; its range, like that of the 

 other species of western North America, still very imperfectly known. 



7. CRATJEGUS. Hawthorn. 



Trees or shrubs, with usually dark scaly bark, rigid terete more or less zigzag branchlets 

 marked by oblong mostly pale lenticels, and by small horizontal slightly elevated leaf- 

 scars, light green when they first appear, becoming red or orange-brown and lustrous or 

 gray, rarely unarmed or armed with stout or slender short or elongated axillary simple or 

 branched spines generally similar in color to that of the branches or trunk on which they 

 grow, often bearing while young linear elongated caducous bracts, and usually producing 

 at their base one or rarely two buds often developing the following year into a branch, a 

 leaf, or a cluster of flowers, or sometimes lengthening into a leafy branch. Winter-buds 

 small, globose or subglobose, covered by numerous imbricated scales, the outer rounded 

 and obtuse at apex, bright chestnut-brown and lustrous, the inner accrescent, green or 

 rose color, often glandular, soon deciduous. Leaves conduplicate in the bud, simple, gen- 

 erally serrate, sometimes 3-nerved, often more or less lobed, especially on vigorous leading 

 branchlets, membranaceous to coriaceous, petiolate, deciduous; stipules often glandular- 

 serrate, linear, acuminate, frequently bright-colored, deciduous, or on vigorous branchlets 



