31 
known as the Tomentosae, so-called from one of its best known species, 
C. tomentosa. This Group is well distinguished from the others by the 
deep longitudinal pits on the inner faces of the nutlets of the fruit, 
which are found also but in a much less developed form in two other 
North American groups. Ten species of the Macracanthae are treated 
as trees in the new edition of Sargent’s Manual of the Trees of North 
America, and there are many species which are shrubs. The Group is 
chiefly northern, perhaps the greatest number of its representatives be- 
ing in Quebec, Ontario and Michigan. Plants of this Group, however, 
are common in all the northern states east of the Mississippi River 
and range southward among the mountains to northern Georgia and 
central Alabama. West of the Mississippi, where they are found from 
central Iowa to Kansas and eastern Texas, they are much less abun- 
dant, growing usually as small shrubs. Crataegus succulenta is a tree 
occasionally twenty feet high with a slender stem and stout ascending 
branches forming a broad irregular head. The flowers, which are about 
two-thirds of an inch in diameter, hang on long stalks in broad, lax, 
many-flowered, villose clusters; the stamens are usually twenty, occa- 
sionally fifteen, and the anthers are deep rose color. The fruit, which 
is arranged in broad, loose, many-fruited, drooping clusters, is globose, 
about two-thirds of an inch in diameter, bright scarlet, very lustrous, 
and soft and pulpy when fully ripe toward the end of October when the 
plants are objects of such great beauty that Crataegus succulenta must 
also be included among the six handsomest American Hawthorns for 
Massachusetts. This is another of the trees which was entirely over- 
looked by American botanists and was first distinguished in Europe 
from cultivated plants. Another instance of the slight attention for- 
merly paid to American Hawthorns is found in another species of the 
Macranthae Group named C. prunifolia, which has been cultivated in 
Europe for at least one hundred and twenty-five years and which until 
recently has been considered a form of the Cockspur Thorn belonging 
to an entirely different group without the pits in the inner faces of the 
nutlets which are prominent in those of C. pranifolia. Although cer- 
tainly American and not rare in European gardens, this handsome 
plant has not been found in recent years growing wild in this country. 
There are two good specimens in the old Crataegus collection near the 
Forest Hills Gate, and one of these is covered with flowers, 
Rosa Ecae. This native of Afghanistan and Turkestan was again 
this spring the first Rose in the Arboretum to bloom. Among the 
yellow-flowered Roses which are hardy in this climate only the flowers 
of R. Hugonis are more beautiful. It is a hardier and more vigorous 
plant, however, than R. Hugonis, of better habit and with handsomer 
dark green, very lustrous and fragrant leaves. The flowers are of the 
same size as those of R. Hugonis, but a little paler in color and less 
thickly set on the branches but more fragrant. The plant of R. Ecae 
in the Shrub Collection is now about eight feet high and five or six 
feet through, and has not before this year been so covered with flow- 
ers. Rosa Ecae as it grows in the Arboretum is one of the most 
beautiful of all the species of Roses, but it is doubtful if it can be 
found in any American nursery. 
