TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



conspicuous tufts of pale hairs. Fruit ripening in September and October and persistent 

 on the branches until the spring of the following year, -depressed-globose, scarlet, lustrous, 

 \' in diameter; calyx deciduous from the ripe fruit, leaving a wide circular scar surrounding 

 the persistent erect tips of the carpels; nutlets 3-5, narrowed and acute at base, broad and 

 rounded at apex, about $' long. 



A tree, 20-30 high, with a straight trunk sometimes a foot in diameter, generally divid- 

 ing 4-5 above the ground into slender usually upright branches forming an oblong or 

 occasionally round-topped head, slender zigzag glabrous bright chestnut-brown lustrous 

 branchlets, becoming dark gray or reddish brown, and armed with slender sharp spines 

 l^'-2' long; often much smaller, and sometimes a broad spreading bush. 



Distribution. Banks of streams in rich soil; western North Carolina at altitudes of about 

 2000, to middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky; in southern Missouri (St. Francois, 

 Wayne, Shannon, Carter and Ripley Counties), and in Richland County, Illinois; now 

 often naturalized in the middle and Ohio valley states; nowhere common. Often culti- 

 vated in the eastern states and in western Europe; hardy as far north as eastern Massa- 

 chusetts. 



137. Cratsegus spathulata Michx. 

 Crataegus spathulata var. flavanthera Sarg. 



Leaves spatulate to oblanceolate, rounded or acuminate and sometimes 3-Iobed at apex, 

 gradually narrowed from above the middle to the slender concave-cuneate entire base, and 

 crenately serrate above, nearly fully grown when the flowers open from March to May and 



Fig. 489 



then sparingly villose above with long white caducous hairs, and at maturity subcori- 

 aceous, glabrous, dark green and lustrous above, paler below, reticulate-venulose, with an 

 obscure yellow midrib and primary veins, l'-2' long, and 1 '-!' wide, clustered at the end 

 of short lateral branchlets; petioles slender, wing-margined to the base, '-' in length; 

 leaves at the end of vigorous shoots often deeply 3-lobed above the middle with rounded 

 coarsely crenately serrate lobes, and narrowed below into a long winged petiole, l'-2' long, 

 and l'-l' wide, with a broad thick midrib often pilose on the lower surface, their stipules 

 foliaceous, lunate, sharply serrate, stalked, often ' broad. Flowers \' in diameter, on 

 long slender pedicels, in glabrous many-flowered narrow corymbs; calyx-tube broadly 

 obconic, glabrous, the lobes short, nearly triangular, almost entire, minutely glandular- 

 apiculate; stamens 20; anthers pale yellow; styles 2-5. Fruit ripening in October, sub- 



