Hill : Celtis pumila Pursh 497 



lets are puberulent, brown or reddish, often tinged with gray. The 

 older branches are gray, with numerous small, oval or roundish, 

 slightly elevated lenticels, lighter than the bark. Winter buds 

 minute, 1-2 mm. long, triangular-ovate, flattened by pressure 

 against the stem, furnished with two or three series of brown puber- 

 ulent scales. Stipules linear-oblong, scarious, membranaceous, 

 caducous, yellowish ; margins hairy, often fimbriate. Leaves on 

 petioles 1-1.5 cm. long, broad-ovate to oval or oval-oblong, acute 

 to acuminate, mostly short-acuminate, sometimes a little falcate, 

 5-8 cm. long by 2.5-5 cm - wide; base commonly very oblique, 

 sometimes rounded, rarely slightly heart-shaped ; the margin en- 

 tire to serrate in various degrees above the lower fourth. Some- 

 times they are prominently and quite evenly serrate on both mar- 

 gins, with callous-tipped, slightly incurved teeth, or on one side 

 only, the teeth varying in position, number and prominence, often 

 reduced to one or two. The leaves are puberulent when young, 

 smooth or a little scabrous as they mature, usually thickened with 

 a S e > light green or somewhat glossy above, frequently mottled 

 with lighter colored spots, paler beneath ; veins lighter and promi- 

 nent on the lower surface, with many anastomosing veinlets. In 

 autumn they turn to a pale or greenish yellow. 



The flowers appear with the expanding leaves in May. The 

 staminate are caducous, on slender recurved pedicels in groups of 

 two or three, mostly three, on the basal part of the twigs in the axils 

 of minute bracts or of the lower leaves, sometimes much crowded 

 on short twigs and appearing racemose. The perfect flowers are 

 usually solitary, on slender ascending pedicels from the axils of 

 leaves above the staminate, or single and central in a staminate 

 group. Sepals 4-6, mostly 4 or 5, thin, membranaceous, incurved- 

 spreading, oblanceolate to oblong-linear or linear, boat-shaped, 

 hairy, greenish to yellowish-green, frequently tinged with red, 

 apex entire or sometimes laciniate ; fringing hairs long. The 

 stamens are 4-6, those of the sterile flowers rising from a torus 

 covered with a dense white tomentum ; filaments smooth, stout 

 and tapering, bent inward before anthesis, bearing the oblong in- 

 trorse anthers attached below the middle in an erect position. 

 During anthesis they straighten, raising the recumbent anthers 

 nearly to the top of the sepals, the filaments being shorter than 



