398 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



often foliaceous, coarsely serrate, usually lunate and stalked and mostly persistent until 

 autumn. Flowers pedicellate, in few or many-flowered simple or compound cymose corymbs 

 terminal on short lateral leafy branchlets, with linear usually bright-colored often glandular 

 caducous bracts and bractlets leaving prominent gland-like scars, the lower branches of com- 

 pound corymbs usually from the axils of upper leaves; branches of the inflorescence mostly 

 3-flowered, the central flower opening before the others; calyx-tube usually obconic, 5-lobed, 

 the lobes acute or acuminate and usually gland-tipped, rarely foliaceous, glandular-serrate 

 or entire, green or reddish toward the apex, reflexed after the flowers open, persistent and 

 often enlarged on the fruit, or deciduous; disk thin or fleshy, entire, lobed or slightly sulcate, 

 concave or somewhat convex; petals imbricated in the bud, orbicular, entire or somewhat 

 erose or rarely toothed at apex, white or rarely rose color, spreading, soon deciduous; 

 stamens often variable in number in the same species by imperfect development, but 

 normally 5 in 1 row and alternate with the petals, or 10 in 5 pairs in 1 row alternate with 

 the petals, or 15 in 2 rows, those of the outer row in 5 pairs opposite the sepals and alter- 

 nate with and rather longer than those of the inner row, or 20 in 3 rows, those of the inner 

 row shorter and alternate with those of the 2d row, or 25 in 4 rows, those of the 4th row- 

 alternate with those of the 3d row; filaments broad at base, subulate, incurved, often 

 persistent on the fruit; anthers pale yellow to nearly white, or pink to light or dark rose 

 color or purple; ovary composed of 1-5 carpels inserted in the bottom of the calyx-tube and 

 united with it; styles free, with dilated truncate stigmas, persistent on the mature carpels; 

 ovules ascending; raphe dorsal; micropyle inferior. Fruit subglobose, ovoid or short-oblong, 

 scarlet, orange-colored, red, yellow, blue, or black, generally open and concave at apex, 

 flesh usually dry and mealy; nutlets 1-5; united below, more or less free and slightly spread- 

 ing above the middle, thick-walled, rounded, acute, or acuminate at apex, full and rounded 

 or narrowed at base, rounded or conspicuously ridged and grooved on the back, flattened, 

 or nearly round when only 1, their ventral faces plane or plano-convex, in some species 

 penetrated by longitudinal cavities or hollow's, and marked by a more or less conspicuous 

 hypostyle sometimes extending to below the middle or nearly to the base of the nutlet. 

 Seed solitary by abortion, erect, compressed, acute, with a membranaceous light chestnut- 

 brown coat; embryo filling the cavity of the seed; cotyledons plano-convex, radicle short, 

 inferior. 



Cratsegus is most abundant in eastern North America, where it is distributed from New- 

 foundland to the mountains of northern Mexico, and is represented by a large number of 

 arborescent and shrubby species. A few species occur in the Rocky Mountains and Pacific- 

 coast regions, and in China, Japan, Siberia, central and southwestern Asia, and in Europe. 

 The genus is still very imperfectly know r n in North America, and in the absence of sufficient 

 information concerning them several arborescent species are necessarily excluded from the 

 following enumeration. The beautiful and abundant flow r ers and showy fruits make^many 

 of the species desirable ornaments of parks and gardens, and several are cultivated. Of 

 exotic species, the Old World Cratoegus Oxyacantha L., and C. monogyna Jacq., early intro- 

 duced into the United States as hedge plants, have now become naturalized in many places 

 in the northeastern and middle states. Cratsegus produces heavy hard tough close- 

 grained red-brown heartwood and thick lighter colored usually pale sapwood; useful for 

 the handles of tools, mallets, and other small articles. 



The number of the stamens, although it differs on the same species within certain usually 

 constant limits, and the color of the anthers, which appears to be specifically constant with 

 one exception, afford the most satisfactory characters for distinguishing the species in 

 the different groups. 



Cratcffus, from icpdros, is in reference to the strength of the wood of these trees. 



