A Shrub. — Flowers in April and May. 
A small bush, with spreading or partly recumbent, round, leafy, 
brown, smooth branches; downy, and somewhat angular when 
young. Thorns none. Leaves alternate, deciduous, egg-shaped, 
or broadly elliptical, blunt or pointed, entire, about an inch long, 
and three-quarters of an inch broad; green, smooth, and even 
above ; white, cottony and veiny beneath. Petioles ( leafstalks ) 
short, downy, channelled above ; each with a pair of spear-shaped, 
pointed, chesnut-coloured, fringed, deciduous stipulas at its base. 
Peduncles ( Jlowerstalhs) downy, from the same buds as the leaves, 
and always shorter than them ; in wild specimens usually solitary 
and single-fiowered ; in cultivated ones often branched, with 3 or 
4 flowers. Bracteas very small, red, spear-shaped, and pointed. 
Flowers (see fig. 2.) drooping, pale red. Calyx (germen of some 
authors) smooth, 5-cleft, its segments egg-shaped, blunt, incurved 
and woolly at the margin. Petals (see fig. 3.) small, but little 
larger than the segments of the calyx, nearly orbicular, white with 
a tinge of pink. Filaments (see figs. 4 & 5.) from 16 to 20, flat, 
and somewhat awl-shaped. Styles 3, sometimes 4, thread-shaped. 
Fruit (see figs. 6 & 7.) pear-shaped, crowned wdth the closed seg- 
ments of the calyx. Nuts (see figs. 7 & 8.) of the same number 
as the styles, bony, entire, each bearing one style from the lower 
part of its inner angle. 
It is a native of sunny paits of subalpine hills of Europe and of Siberia, but it 
was not known to be indigenous to Britain, till Mr. Wilson found it in a wild 
state at Ormshead, in 1825. A specimen of it is said to have been gathered wild, 
by J. W. Griffith, Esq. of Gam, as long ago as 1783, but it appears it was 
laid by and forgotten. In a wild stale it forms a shrub from 2 to 3 feet high ; but 
when cultivated it will attain the height of 4 or 5 feet. Mr. Loudon says, that 
if it is grafted standard high on the hawthorn or the mountain ash, it will form a 
very cuiious, lound-headed, pendent- branched tiee, as may be seen in the 
garden of the Hoi licultural Society of London, and in the Hammersmith Nursery. 
The fruit, which ripens in July and A ugust, is said to be fiist green, then orange, 
then red, and finally black. Its pulp is mealy, insipid, or slightly austere. 
Linn,fus recommends this slnub for making low hedges, in dry broken ground, 
as the roots run veiy deep into the eaith ; but, according to Mr. Christv’s ob- 
servations, it is liable to be browsed on by sheep. 
Three varieties of it are cultivated, viz. a. erythrocarpa ; 13. melanocarpa ; 
and 7. depressa ; the latter is rather spiny; in a the fruit is red, and (3 black, 
when ripe. 
The Natural Order Fomaceje is composed of polypetalous, dicotyledonous 
trees or shrubs, wiih alternate, stipulate, simple, or compound leaves, and 
cymose, white or pink flowers The calyx is bell-shaped, or pitcher-shaped, 
fleshy, surrounding the carpels, and adherent to them; limb 5-lobed, the odd 
segment posteiior. I he corolla consists of 5 unquiculate petals, itiseited in the 
throat of the cahx, the odd one anterior. 1 he stamens are indefinite, and are 
inserted in a ring in the throat of the calyx. The ovaries vary in number from 
1 to 5, and adhere more or less to the sides of the calyx, and to each other. The 
ovules are usually 2, collateral, ascending, very lately solitary. The styles are 
equal in number to the ovaiies, each having a simple stigma. The fruit is a 
pome, consisting of the berry-like calyx and carpels. The carpels are caitil- 
aginous, spongy, or bony, of 2 valves, or indehiscent. The seeds are generally 
1 or 2 in each carpel or cell (numerous in Cydonia, the Quince), upright, with 
a catilaginous (grisly), or bony testa (sperinoderm), without albumen. The 
cotyledons are oval and fleshy ; and the embryo upright, with a short, conical 
radicle. — The Biitish genera contained in this older are, Mespilus. — Crutcryus, 
t. 118. — Pyrus, t. 111.— and Cotoneaster, t. 402. 
