Hello everyone, recently I was going through some old lists of local species I want to try and find and I found a pretty cool one. This species is Crataegus Spissa, it has a common name of essex hawthorn. From what I can tell it has only been collected in the adirondacks (specifically in Essex county, hence the common name), it looks like this species hasn’t been collected since the early 1900s. The digital information on this species has been pretty bare - boned, so I am looking for any information on this species. I am particularly interested in a description of this species and information on the habitat that this species occupies. I am also a little sceptical that this species may have been synonymised because for a tree species in my area, there sure is an unusual lack of information available. Although all of the sites that I have gone to say this species is valid. Thank you for your help with this.
https://www.gbif.org/species/3015665
https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/taxon/Z8G9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sprague_Sargent (Information on the person who described this species, he seems like a credible person based off of what I have read.)
An absolute “must” for delving into early literature on anything biological is the Biodiversity Heritage Library [biodiversitylibrary.org]. I spend an inordinate time on this site researching various plants and animals. A quick search for “Crataegus spissa” pulls up 613 hits on publications (not all of which will be relevant).
Clicking on the “Scientific Names” tab brings up a link to a good bibliography on the species in chart form:
which looks, in part like this:
Then you can click on the “Page #” or “View” links to get to digital copies of the original articles!
And you’re off and running into the primary literature! Have fun!
I should add that BHL won’t necessarily lead you to the most recent taxonomic literature. You’ll need to follow leads on the sites you’ve listed to really dig into that.
For instance, here’s a link on BHL to the original description of Crataegus spissa by Sargent in the “Report of the State Botanist” (NY) for 1907:
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/14666544
Thank you for your help @gcwarbler , I will definitely be using BHL to help with finding original descriptions from now on.
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