Crataegus wootoniana

 This week I've been spending time down at the Botanic Garden, as a visitor admiring the fall folliage, as a docent for a Health & Wellness Day at the BioPark, as the plant label guy, and as a volunteer working on the tiny BioPark herbarium. The herbarium is tucked away in a small workroom near the High Desert Rose Garden. After this morning's early shower passed and the sun came out, the view of the back border was particularly striking with bright yellow Philadelphus, deep marroon Physocarpus, and the taller Crataegus with its bright red fruit against lemony foliage. That has inspired me to pull together a piece this month on our own rare NM native hawthorn, Crataegus wootoniana. Eggl. or Wooton's hawthorn.

It's named after E. O. Wooton, who we've discussed before with regard to the unfortunate Brickellia chenopodina (https://www.facebook.com/groups/847285882110574/posts/1619502338222254). Eggl. refers to Willard Webster Eggleston (1863-1935). He was an expert on hawthorns, which is a difficult genus due to apomixis (asexual reproduction), polyploidy (multiple sets of chromosomes), and hybridization (interbreeding between species). As best I can tell, Wooton collected it, but it wasn't until Eggleston saw a specimen from Metcalfe that was collected in Socorro County on August 22, 1903 that this hawthorn was recognized as a distinct species.

NM Rare Plants places this rare plant in Catron, Grant and Lincoln counties, so I'm puzzled by the lack of a reference to Socorro County. Is the type specimen's population gone? SEINET has all the location information redacted because this is a rare plant. iNaturalist shows a couple sightings in the Pinos Altos Mountains and another over by Ruidoso, but otherwise can't help us.

NM Rare Plants describes the plant as a small tree or shrub to 3 m tall; branches thorny, the thorns purplish brown, 3-4 cm in length; leaves simple, alternate and rhombic in outline, margins with 3-4 broad lobes on each side of the upper two-thirds of the leaf, these lobes with fine marginal teeth that are not strongly glandular-tipped; flowers with 5 white petals and 5-8 stamens, carpels 1-5, hard and bone-like with each enclosing 1 nutlet; fruit a pome. Flowers April to June. Canyon bottoms and forest understory in lower montane coniferous forest; 1,900-2,500 m (6,500-8,000 ft). It should be out there sporting its bright red fruits that are similar to small rose hips. Possibly it's still holding on to its late autumn fall color if today's wind didn't strip them off.

Crataegus erythropoda has leaf margins that are not distinctly lobed and the marginal teeth are glandular-tipped. This species is closely related to C. erythrocarpa and possibly C. macracantha, a more northern species. The distinction between C. wootoniana and C. macracantha var. occidentalis needs further study. It's possible that Eggleston collected in New Mexico from what I've seen about herbarium records, but the information on his activities seem to place him firmly back East for most if not all of his career.