BULLETIN NO. 15. 
For persons who are interested in the showy fruits of trees and shrubs 
which remain on the branches until late in the autumn or through the 
winter this is a good time to study the American species of Hawthorns 
(Crataegus), although the leaves of many of these plants have already 
fallen. A large part of the species in the collection on the eastern slope 
of Peter's Hill were not known ten years ago and many of these plants 
are still too small to produce fruit, and now the most interesting Ameri- 
can Hawthorns in the Arboretum are on the bank just east of the Shrub 
Collection and easily reached from the Forest Hills Gate. 
The handsomest American species to be seen here now is Crataegus 
nitida, one of the best garden plants of the genus as it is represented in 
North America. It is a native of the bottom-lands of the Mississippi 
River in Illinois opposite St. Louis where it grows into a tree of consider- 
able size for a Hawthorn. It is flat- topped with wide-spreading branches; 
the leaves are dark green and very lustrous; the small flowers are pro- 
duced in innumerable clusters, and the fruit of medium size which now 
covers the trees is orange-red, long persistent and makes a good contrast 
to the bright red and yellow leaves which have hardly begun to fall. 
Crataegus coccinioides and C. fecunda from the neighborhood of St. 
Louis, like C. nitida , have been growing in the Arboretum for thirty 
years and are now broad bushy trees covered with fruit, although the 
leaves are beginning to fall. Crataegus coccinioides has large broad 
leaves and very compact semiglobose clusters of large flowers which are 
followed by large dull red globose fruits, which are also in compact clus- 
ters and are produced every year in great confusion. Crataegus fecunda 
is one of the so-called Cock-spur Thorns with large, thick, shining leaves, 
rather small flowers, and large, oblong, drooping, shining fruits which do 
not all fall until winter. 
Crataegus pruinosa can also be seen here covered with fruit although 
the leaves are gone. This small tree is the type of one of the distinct 
and most widely distributed groups of the genus, the Pruinosae, which 
are distinguished by their large showy flowers, thick leaves and fruit 
which matures late in the autumn without becoming soft, sometimes re- 
maining green and sometimes turning bright red and usually covered 
with an abundant glaucous bloom. On Crataegus pruinosa the large, 
depressed, globose fruits turn bright scarlet and remain on the branches 
in good condition until late in the season; these, as well as the large blue- 
green leaves and the large flowers with the bright rose-colored anthers 
of the twenty stamens, which are produced in wide and abundant clusters, 
make this a desirable ornamental plant. 
Equally handsome but quite different in appearance is Crataegus succu- 
lenta , one of the Tomentosae Group. This is a late -flowering species 
with small flowers in broad flat- topped clusters; these are succeeded by 
globose fruits drooping on long stems, and until October remain small 
and hard but later, and when fully ripe, enlarge and become deep scarlet 
with soft, orange-colored, succulent flesh, and in this condition are soon 
eaten by birds. 
