A tree, 20°—25° high, with a tall, slender often spiny trunk covered with ashy gray bark nearly black at the base of old trees, spreading and ascending branches forming a rounded or oval usually open head, and thin nearly straight bright red-brown glabrous branchlets becoming gray tinged with red or brown in their second season, and armed with thin nearly straight bright chestnut-brown lustrous spines, 1′—1½′ long.
Distribution. Open woods in clay soil in the neighborhood of Greenville, Butler County, Alabama; common near Tallahassee, Leon County, Florida.
117. [Cratægus robur] Beadl.
Leaves ovate, oval or obovate, acute or acuminate, entire or sparingly glandular below, finely serrate above with incurved glandular teeth, and incisely lobed above the middle with numerous short acute lobes, nearly fully grown when the flowers open at the end of March, and then membranaceous and dark yellow-green and lustrous, and at maturity yellow-green, 1½′—2′ long, and 1′—1½′ wide, with a slender yellow midrib, and thin primary veins extending very obliquely to the point of the lobes; turning in the autumn orange, yellow, or brown; petioles slender, slightly wing-margined toward the apex, sparingly glandular, ½′—1′ in length; leaves at the end of vigorous shoots broadly ovate, cuneate or nearly truncate at the wide base, deeply divided into broad lateral lobes, often 2′—3′ long and broad, with a stout broadly winged petiole frequently 1′ long. Flowers 1⅛′—1¼′ in diameter, on long slender pedicels, in 5—10-flowered glabrous corymbs, with large conspicuously glandular bracts and bractlets; calyx-tube narrowly obconic, glabrous, the lobes gradually narrowed from a broad base, glabrous, entire or sparingly serrate; stamens 20; anthers pale rose color; styles 3—5, surrounded at base by a narrow ring of pale hairs. Fruit ripening in September and October, on elongated, slender pedicels, in few-fruited drooping clusters, subglobose, orange-red, about ½′ in diameter; calyx-lobes deciduous before the maturity of the fruit leaving a narrow ring round the shallow cavity; flesh thin and firm; nutlets 3—5, broad, rounded at the ends, barely grooved on the rounded back, 3/16′ long and nearly as broad.
A tree, 20°—25° high, with a trunk 4′—6′ in diameter, covered with gray or brown scaly bark, spreading or ascending branches, and slender red-brown branchlets unarmed or armed with stout spines ¾′—1′ long; more often a large much-branched shrub, with one or more stems.
Distribution. Woods and borders of fields, northwestern Florida; common in the neighborhood of Tallahassee, Leon County.
XIV. BRACTEATÆ.
CONSPECTUS OF THE ARBORESCENT SPECIES.
Leaves oval to broad-obovate, subcoriaceous; corymbs many-flowered; stamens 10—20, usually 20; fruit bright red or orange-red.118. [C. Harbisonii] (C). Leaves broad-ovate or rarely obovate, thin; corymbs 3—10-flowered; stamens 20; fruit bright red.119. [C. Ashei] (C).