[Plate 33.] 



THE COPIOUS FLOWERED CRAB. 



(PYRUS [MALUS] FLORIBUNDA.) 



A Hardy Flowering Tree, from China and Japan, belonging to the Natural Order Pomace/E. 



Specific Character. 



PYRUS (MALUS) FLORIBUNDA. — A small tree, perfectly hardy, and bearing in early spring a profusion of 

 lovely rose-pink flowers, each about an inch and a quarter across, which become paler as they expand. The 

 branches are long, slender, and bend downwards; the glabrous leaves are shortly stalked, lanceolate, acute, 

 sharply and finely saw-toothed. The flowers are borne in sessile umbels or trusses, each made up of six to 

 eight slender, erect, flower-stalks. The flower-buds, which from their rich rose colour are particularly attractive, 

 are about half an inch long, ovate, and pointed at both ends. The ovary is oval, surmounted by five short 

 linear lanceolate sepals ; the petals oblong obovate ; the stamens very numerous, erect, whitish. The ripe fruit 

 is globose, of the size of a large pea, but not edible. 



M. T. Masters. 



THIS is one of the most beautiful of all flowering trees, and, although it has been 

 in the country for some years, is so seldom met with in gardens that its 

 existence would not seem to be so well known as it deserves to be. It is a native of 

 China and Japan, the countries which have done so much to embellish our gardens 

 with quantities of flowering trees, shrubs, and other plants, many of which adapt them- 

 selves to our climate quite as well as those that are indigenous to the kingdom. Its 

 flowers are alike beautiful in their different stages of development, before opening the 

 long, pliant, drooping shoots, densely clothed their entire length with the large crimson- 

 red buds, are equally as effective as are the pale pink fully expanded flowers which 

 it produces in such profusion as to form complete wreaths a foot and a half to two 

 feet long. It grows to the size of a small dwarf tree, the branches of a weak willow- 

 like character, pendent in habit; and it seems to resist our severest winters equally as 

 well as the common English Crab. Several examples of it that we planted just before 

 the severe frost set in at the close of 1880 have stood in exposed situations com- 

 pletely uninjured, and bloomed in the following spring as if they had not been moved. 

 This Pyrus seems to be at home in any description of soil that will grow ordinary 



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