Cratagus coccinea, Linn., var. macracantha, Dudley, Cayuga Flora, 33 (1886).

THE thorns are among the most varied and attractive of our native shrubs. They possess great merit because of their picturesque habits, as well as from the pro-fuseness of their bloom and their interesting fruits. One of the most picturesque of all thorns is the recently named var. macracantha of the scarlet thorn, C coccinea. The old plants attain a height of ten or twelve feet, and the top assumes asomewhat drooping or tortuous aspect, which is very characteristic. The spurs are exceedingly long, reaching four or five inches. The flowers are very fragrant, more so than any native thorn with which I am acquainted. It might be called with propriety the fragrant thorn. In this regard it is wholly different from the scarlet thorn, of which it has been held to be a variety. The scarlet thorn possesses anything but an agreeable odor. A bush of the long-spurred thorn in flower scents the air for a considerable distance.

But the dissimilarity between these two thorns in matter of fragrance is only one of several very marked differences, which, I think mark the long-spurred thorn as a distinct species. At all events, it is extremely doubtful if the plant is closely related to the scarlet thorn. The wedge-based and furrowed leaves at once indicate that it is nearer the pear thorns (Cratagus tomentosa) than the scarlet thorn. Professor Dudley, who described and named the thorn in his flora of the Cayuga basin, N. Y., contributes the following note for this occasion upon the systematic position of the long-spurred thorn:

"General opinion concerning this thorn has associated it with the C. coccinea type, rather than with the C. tomentosa type of thorns; and no doubt its position is intermediate, connecting the two. After an examination, however, of a considerable series of specimens from Pennsylvania, New York, New England, and Quebec, one is brought to the conclusion that its affinities are with the pear thorn rather than with the scarlet thorn.

"With one exception, the pear thorn (C. tomentosa) is well characterised in the sixth edition of Gray's Manual. Instead of 'glands none,' the description should read, calyx lobes pectinately serrate and glandular,as Torrey and Gray wrote it in the 'Flora of North America, p. 465.

"Taking representative specimens of the pear thorn and the long-spurred thorn (our var macra-cantha), they are found to agree very nearly in the general outline and size of the leaf, which is almost invariably contracted into a shortish stout petiole; in the lanceolate calyx lobes, abundantly pectinate and glandular; in the stiff, upright habit of the cyme in fruit, and in the usually narrow lanceolate stipules. The true C. coccinea has leaves thin, abrupt or cordate at the base, on slender petioles; its triangular-lanceolate calyx lobes are remotely dentate-glandular as a rule, often almost glandless; the cyme is diffuse in fruit, and the stipules usually broad.

"The typical long-spurred thorn, with its thick, shining, sharply serrate, wedge-shaped, nearly smooth leaves; very long spines; reddish, rather diffusely spreading branches; its large globose shining buds; its rounded head ; dark, checked bark (less scaly on the old trunks than in the other two), and its small fruits, seems an extremely characteristic plant; but the fact that it varies with larger fruits and more abrupt, smooth leaves and shorter spines toward C. coccinea, with more pubescent leaves and shorter spines toward C. tomentosa, has been the chief cause of its long obscuration.

"Probably we have here a specific type, accompanied by the usual crataegi variations, as distinct as in C. punctata, C. glandulosa, Willd., may be its earliest name. But its present position need not be disturbed until after further observations of its variations, and until after old European herbariums, where it no doubt exists, as it does in European gardens, are carefully examined".

The long-spurred thorn occurs from the St. Lawrence river and New England to Minnesota. Its southward range is not determined. It should be introduced to cultivation, as it is beautiful and meritorious. - L. H. B.