Crataegus sargenti Beadle Common name: Sargent's Hawthorn Family: Rosacae; Rose Origin: Native Flowering period: April 20, 2008. Fruiting period: September 05, 2004. Habitat: Rocky woods on limestone slopes, or occasionaly rich deep soil Type locality: Valley Head, Alabama Herbarium specimen: Record number 178725: A/17343, Collection at Harvard University Herbarium, Cambridge, MA

Comments: In 1899 this species was discovered in Rome, Georgia by Charles S. Sargent (1841-1927), a botanist and Director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.

Description: Chauncey D. Beadle definded and published Sargent's Hawthorn in 1899: "An intricately branched tree seldom more than 6 m tall, or more frequently a large shrub 2-5 m in height, with one or several stems: the bark of the trunk ashy-gray or light brown, slightly fissured and broken into many thin plate-like scales, or nearly smooth with scattered patches of oppressed, small scales: branches spreading or ascending, armed with straight or curved, simple or branched, dark chestnut-brown or gray spines 2.5 - 7 cm long; they are intricately divided into numerous, short branchlets which are clothed with the dark reddish-brown bark and marked by small rounded or elongated pale lenticels, forming a narrow, or occasionally rounded or flat-topped head: buds globular, bright reddish-brown; flowers which appear about the first of May and when the leaves are almost fully grown in a few,- (mostly 3-) flowered, more or less pubescent, simply corymbs: lateral pedicels longer than the intermediate only 1.5-3.5 mm long, more or less pubescent or pilose: calyx obconic pubescent, the segments glandular-serrate, 6-9 mm long: corolla white, the divisions nearly round or a little broader than long: stamens normally 20, 5-7 mm long, pistils 3-5 surrounded at the base with pale hairs: fruit, which ripens and falls after the middle of September, globose or depressed-globose 10 -13 mm broad, 10 -12 mm high, yellow, orange -yellow or flushed with red, the flesh thin and firm; cavity 3-5 mm broad and near as deep surrounded by the remnants of the stamens: nutlets 3-5, but usually 4, hard and bony, the walls thick, 7-9 mm long, 4-6 mm measured dorso-ventrally, with the back ridged and grooved and lateral faces nearly plane: leaves thin and subcoriaceous, sparsely pubescent when young, soon glabrous yellowish-green on the upper surface, paler below and displaying 5-7 pairs of prominent veins: they are ovate, ovate-lanceoate or round-ovate, 2,5 -12 cm long, 1-6 cm wide, or occasionally large on vigorous shoots, acute at apex, rounded or abruptly contracted at the base into a margined or winged, slightly glandular petiole, 5 mm - 3.5 cm long, the borders irregularly and doubly serrate and incisely lobed and serratures minutely glandular tipped: stipules linear to linear-lanceolate, glandular or on strong shoots foliaceous, lunate, glandular-serrate caduceus". -Chauncey D. Beadle, 1899.

Last updated on April 20, 2008.

Reference :
1. Beadle, Chauncey D. " Studies in Crataegus. I." Botanical Gazette, Vol. 28, No. 6. (1899) : 407-409
2. Harvard University Herbaria (http://www.huh.harvard.edu/ ), Cambridge, 22 Divinity Avenue, Massachusetts 02138, USA
3. Images by Zvezdana Ukropina-Crawford

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