454 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



cheek, about |' in diameter; calyx little enlarged, with spreading lobes usually deciduous 

 before the fruit ripens; flesh thin and yellow; nutlets 3-5, about \' long. 



A tree, sometimes 30 high, with a tall straight trunk 6'-8' in diameter, covered with 

 close or slightly fissured bark broken into small gray or red-brown scales, and often armed 

 with long stout branched gray spines, ascending or spreading branches forming a narrow 

 irregular or round-topped head, and slender branchlets dark green tinged with red and 

 covered with long pale scattered white hairs when they first appear, soon becoming gla- 



Fig. 410 



brous, bright red-brown during their first year, and ultimately ashy gray, and armed with 

 few or many thin straight or somewhat curved bright chestnut-brown spines l'-2' long; 

 or in dry soil of upland forests usually a shrub, with numerous stems. 



Distribution. Low moist flat woods; northern Alabama and northwestern and central 

 Georgia, and occasionally on the drier uplands of the surrounding country; common; 

 central Mississippi (Pelahatchee, Rankin County; Jackson, Hinds County, and in Franklin 

 County); eastern Louisiana (Holtsville, St. Tammany Parish, anthers pink, JR. S. Cocks). 



59. Crataegus diffusa Sarg. 

 Cratcegus Beckwithce Sarg. 

 Crataegus Robbinsiana Sarg. 



Leaves ovate, acute or acuminate at apex, rounded, truncate or cordate at the entire 

 base, often doubly serrate above with straight glandular teeth, and more or less deeply 

 divided into 4 or 5 pairs of spreading acuminate lateral lobes, deeply-tinged with red, gla- 

 brous below and covered above with short white hairs when they unfold, nearly fully grown 

 when the flowers open from the middle to the 20th of May and then thin, pale yellow-green 

 and hairy above and pale below, and at maturity thin and firm, smooth, dark green and 

 glabrous on the upper surface, pale on the lower surface, If '-2' long, and I'-lf ' wide, with 

 a slender yellow midrib, and thin primary veins extending obliquely to the point of the 

 lobes; often turning orange color tinged with red in the autumn; petioles slender, slightly 

 wing-margined at apex, glandular with minute stipitate dark glands, |'-f' in length; leaves 

 at the end of vigorous shoots broad-ovate, usually long-pointed, cordate or rarely truncate 

 at base, more coarsely serrate, more deeply lobed, and frequently 2|'-3' long, and 2'-2|' 

 wide, with a stout reddish conspicuously glandular petiole f '- f' in length. Flowers '~| ' 

 in diameter, on slender glabrous pedicels, in 6-10-flowered corymbs, with linear glandular 

 bracts and bractlets mostly deciduous before the flowers open; calyx-tube broadly obconic, 

 glabrous, the lobes gradually narrowed from a wide base, acuminate at the gland-tipped 



