Question

Which plant is described by these clues? Its genus name yokes the Greek word for strength to the Greek word for a sharp point — hard, close-grained wood on shoots that end in a spike. Each flower sets five separate {petals} around a crowd of some twenty {stamens} whose {anthers} shade from pink to purple-red, all standing on the rim of a cup fused to the {ovary} below. The leaves sit singly along the twig with a pair of small leafy {stipules} at each stalk base, and the ripe fruit still wears a ring of dried {sepals} at its tip. The fruit is a {pome} only 0.3 to 0.5 inch (8 to 13 mm) across, its flesh wrapped around a bony {pyrene} rather than around soft pips. Leaf {sinuses} cut at least two-thirds of the way to the {midrib}, leaving narrow {lobes} longer than they are broad and nearly toothless except near their tips. The species name is built from the Greek words for one and for female, and it counts the solitary {style} standing at the centre of every flower. The heavy blossom scent carries trimethylamine, among the first compounds released by decaying flesh, which is why the smell divides people so sharply. A tree of 15 to 25 feet (4.5 to 7.5 m) native to Europe, western Asia and North Africa, it shrugs off thin chalk, heavy clay, salt-laden coastal wind and city air alike. Birds carry its seed into the oak woodlands and stream corridors of the Pacific Northwest, where it is now listed as invasive and its planting regulated. In a British hedge it is muddled with a suckering shrub that blooms on bare black twigs in early spring and ripens sour, blue-black fruit. Its country name is simply the month it blooms, thousands of miles of it were laid into stock-proof farm hedges across Britain and Ireland, and old superstition held that carrying the blossom indoors invited a death in the house.

Accepted Answer

Crataegus monogyna

Name That Plant #091