Evergreen shrubs or small trees, sometimes depressed and gnarled, often much branched and the young branchlets often spinose-tipped. Leaves simple, variable in size and shape, mostly coriaceous, 3-5 cm. long or less, crenate or dentate. Flowers 5-merous, pink or white, in small terminal corymbose cymes usually ex-ceeded by the leaves; ovary inferior at anthesis, the 5 carpels distinct from each other from the flowering stage on but attached parietally, at maturity with bony endocarp, enlarged and often somewhat exserted from the fleshy hypanthium; ovule 1 (occasionally 2) in each locule; cotyledons accumbent. Fruit a small red, purple or black pome 1 cm. long or less, tipped by the persistent sepals. Hesperomeles is a genus of somewhat doubtful standing, scarcely morpholog-ically distinct from Osteomeles, of which the (Hawaiian and Chinese) species have pinnate leaves but in technical characters agree precisely with the American Hesperomeles. The Old World genus Pyracantha is evidently very closely akin to Hesperomeles, as evidenced by similarities between species of the two groups, but differs in having the carpels regularly bi-ovulate, and the cotyledons incumbent.
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