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Crataegus nitida. This is a native of the bottom-lands of the Miss- 
issippi River near East St. Louis where it sometimes grows thirty feet 
high and forms a tall straight trunk. The wide-spreading lower branches 
and the erect upper branches form a broad, rather open unsymmetri- 
cal head. The leaves are long and comparatively narrow, and those near 
the ends of the branches are often deeply lobed; they are dark green 
and very lustrous, and turn yellow, orange or red late in October. 
The flowers are not more than three-quarters of an inch in diameter, 
and the scarlet oblong fruit rarely exceeds the length of half an inch. 
The flowers and fruit, however, are produced in great profusion; and, 
although many species have larger flowers and handsomer fruits, the 
habit of this tree, its beautiful foliage and its autumn color make C. 
nitida one of the handsomest Thorn trees. Many persons indeed place 
it with the six or eight most beautiful species of the genus. 
Crataegus pruinosa. There is a good plant of this widely distributed 
eastern species on the bank. It is a small, round-topped tree with 
wide, dark blue-green, lobed leaves which late in the autumn turn dull 
orange or orange and red. The flowers are an inch in diameter in few- 
flowered clusters, and very conspicuous from the large, deep rose-col- 
ored anthers of the twenty stamens. The fruit, which is often nearly 
an inch in diameter, is nearly globose, bright blue-green covered with 
a glaucous bloom, and five-angled at the end of September; later it 
loses its angles, turns orange color and finally becomes dark purplish 
red and very lustrous. Both when it is in flower and when the fruit 
is red this is a very ornamental plant. 
Crataegus aprica. There are two plants of this species in this col- 
lection. They are interesting as representing a peculiar group of the 
genus {Flavae) which is confined to the southeastern United States. 
C. aprica is a tree sometimes twenty feet high in the low valleys of 
the southern Appalachian Mountains which are its home. This plant is 
attractive just now for the small leaves have turned bright orange and 
red and the branches are thickly covered with its small clusters of 
dull orange-red fruits. These plants were raised from seed presented 
to the Arboretum in 1876 by Asa Gray as Crataegus coccinea, the 
name by which most red-fruited American Hawthorns were known 
until the systematic study of the genus was undertaken some twenty 
years ago. 
Crataegus coccinioides. There is a good plant of this Thorn in this 
collection. It is a round-topped densely branched tree with broad, thin, 
dark green, ovate, lobed leaves from two to three inches long which 
are now bright orange and scarlet. The large flowers are produced in 
very compact, nearly globose, from five- to seven-flowered clusters 
and are conspicuous from the large size of the deep rose-colored an- 
thers of the twenty stamens. The fruit which is a good deal covered 
by the foliage, ripens and falls gradually during the month of October 
and is subglobose, nearly an inch in diameter, dark crimson, very lus- 
trous and erect on short pedicels in compact clusters. This handsome 
