General: Medium to tall shrub, 1-4 m tall, much-branched, very thorny with spine-tipped spur shoots, sometimes suckering to form dense thickets; twigs blackish, sometimes hairy when young.
Leaves: Alternate, deciduous, oval to egg-shaped, 2-4 cm long, finely saw-toothed, blunt at the tip, hairy on both surfaces or on the veins beneath but becoming smooth, short-stalked, the stalks usually without glands.
Flowers: Inflorescence a cluster of stalked flowers, the flowers single at each of the several crowded nodes of a short spur-shoot that was formed the previous year; corollas white, bowl-shaped, 1-2 cm across, the petals 5, oblong-egg-shaped, 5-7 mm long; calyces 5-lobed; ovaries superior.
Fruits: Fleshy drupes with a large wrinkled stone (prunes), nearly globe-shaped, 10-15 mm long, on stalks shorter than 1 cm, bluish-purple to black, with whitish bloom; seeds 1.
If more than one illustration is
available for a species (e.g., separate illustrations were provided for two
subspecies) then links to the separate images will be provided below.
Note that individual subspecies or varietal illustrations are not always available.
