Type locality: Hills near Silver Creek in Rome, Georgia
Herbarium specimen: Collections at: Cambridge, MA and St. Louis, MO
Comments: In 1900 this species was discovered in Rome, Georgia by Chauncey D. Beadle (1866-1950), a botanist from Biltmore Herbarium in North Carolina.

In July 2008 the author of this web site discovered specimen of Crataegus spp. L. on slop of Lavender Mt., and recognized it as possible Crataegus sororia Beadle. In autumn of the same year she collected a fruit and in spring of 2009 a flower of the hawthorn.

Description: “A tree 5-7 m tall, with a trunk 1-1.5 dm in diameter, dividing two or three meters above ground into several stout, ascending or spreading branches, which form an oval or rounded head; or usually smaller, 3-4 m in height, forming a large shrub with one or more stems: bark gray, tinged with brown or nearly black, furrowed and broken on the surface into small, persistent scales: branchlets armed with gray or chestnut-brown spines 1.5-3.5 cm long: buds globose, bright reddish-brown: leaves 2-6 cm long, including the petiole, 1-3 cm broad; or on vigorous shoots sometimes 6 cm broad, obovate, round-ovate, or nearly orbicular in outline, or on the shoots even broader than long, with a truncate or subcordate base, acute or rounded at the apex, either gradually narrowed or abruptly contracted at the base and prolonged into margined, glandular petiole 5mm -1.5 cm long, the borders sharply and irregularly serrate and incisely lobed, especially above the middle, the serratures glandular-apiculate; sparingly pubescent when young (at least along the petiole, midrib, and principal veins), becoming glabrous, or with a few hairs in the axils of the prominent veins and bordering the petiole, bright green on the upper surface, paler below, fading in the autumn to tones of yellow and brown, or with occasional dashes of red: flowers which appear in the vicinity of Rome, Georgia (type locality), during the last of April or first of May, and when the leaves are nearly grown, born in pubescent, glandular-bracteate 3-6 flowered corymbs; pedicles 5-15 mm long, sparsely pubescent, bearing one or more pectinately-glandular, caducous bractlets: calyx obconic, usually with a few soft hairs, the divisions 6-8 mm long, glandular-serrate: stamens normally 20: styles 2-5, commonly 3, surrounded at the base with pale hairs: fruit large, globose, 12-18 mm in diameter, red, red and yellow, or yellowish-red, ripening and falling after the middle of September, the flesh thick, soft, and pleasant to the taste: nutlets usually 3, hard and bony, 7-9 mm long, 4-5 mm thick, measured from the back to the inner angle, the lateral faces nearly plane and the back ridged and grooved. Crataegus sororia is related to C. aprica above proposed and to C. flava Aiton, l.t. . From the former it may be separated by the more numerous stamens, larger fruit and calyx segments, and coarser seeds; while from the last named species it differs from accepted figures and descriptions which have been drawn from specimens in cultivation in Europe, in the shape of the fruit and the pubescent corymbs and petioles. The proposed species is abundantly represented on the woody hills, slopes, and rocky exposures, and in old fields from northwestern Georgia and adjacent Alabama southward to Florida.”- C.D. Beadle, 1900.