Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL. VIII 
NO. 8 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS. MAY 27, 1922 
Crataegus nitida belongs to the Virides Group of the genus. This is 
one of the most distinct of the natural groups into which the genus is 
divided, well marked by its small flowers in many-flowered corymbs 
with twenty or rarely ten stamens and yellow or occasionally rose- 
colored anthers, small usually red fruit and leaves with rare exceptions 
pointed at the ends. The species are trees with the exception of two 
or three which grow only in western Texas, and descriptions and flgures 
of thirteen of them are found in the new edition of Sargent’s Manual 
of the Trees of North America. The plants of this Group are distrib- 
uted from the extreme southeastern part of Virginia, southward in the 
region east and south of the Appalachian Mountains to northern Florida, 
through the Gulf States to Texas and up the valley of the Mississippi 
River to Iowa and southern and western Illinois. Of the type of the 
Group, C. viridis, there are probably more individuals now growing 
than of any other Hawthorn in the world, for it is pretty generally 
distributed over the whole region in which species of this Group grow, 
and although rare in the Atlantic and east Gulf States it covers with 
dense thickets great areas of swampy ground in western Louisi- 
ana, the coast region of eastern Texas, southern Arkansas, and all 
the region adjacent to the Mississippi to the northern limits of its 
range. Its pale gray bark nearly as close as that of a Hornbeam 
and scarlet or orange fruit mostly persistent on the branches during 
the winter, and from an eighth to a quarter of an inch in diameter, 
make it an easy species to recognize. The large plants of Crataegus 
nitida, raised from seed gathered in 1880 on the bottom lands of the 
Mississippi in the neighborhood of East St. Louis, and growing in the 
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