In 1832, Drummond collected in the Red River region, a hawthorn which has never been properly made out. Mohr and Sargent also collected imperfect specimens, and recently the fruit has been collected by Letterman. These trees looked at a distance like plum trees, with small blue fruit; the ground under them (August 19, 1882), was covered with fallen leaves.

It is a tree twenty to thirty feet high, in very old trees with rough bark, spines usually about six inches long, curved. Leaves about two inches long, lanceolate oblong, short petioled, leathery, serrate, shining, with ribs almost obliterated. Flowers among the smallest of the genus.