ULMACE^ 



293 



Distribution. Usually on dry gravelly uplands, less commonly in rich alluvial 

 soil along the borders of swamps and the banks of streams, southern Virginia through 

 the middle districts to western Florida, and from southern Indiana and Illinois 

 through western Kentucky and Tennessee to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and 

 through southern Missouri, Arkansas, and the eastern part of the Indian Territory 

 to the valley of the Trinity River, Texas; of its largest size and most abundant west 

 of the Mississippi River. 



Often planted as a shade-tree in the street* of towns and villages of the southern 

 states. 



4. Ulmus fulva, Michx. Slippery Elm. Red Elm. 



Leaves ovate-oblong, abruptly contracted into long slender points, rounded at 

 the base on one side and short-oblique on the other, and coarsely doubly serrate, with 

 incurved callous-tipped teeth; when they unfold thin, coated on the lower surface 

 with pale pubescence, pilose on the upper, with scattered white hairs, at maturity 



T'^-. 2J7 



thick and firm, dark green and rugose with crowded sharp-pointed tubercles pointing 

 toward the apex of the leaf, soft, smooth, and coated below, especially on the thin 

 midribs and in the axils of the slender straight veins, with white hairs, 5'-7' long, 

 2'-3' broad, turning a dull yellow color in the autumn; their petioles stout, pubescent, 

 ^' long; stipules obovate-oblong to oblong-lanceolate, thin and scarious, pale-pubes- 

 cent, and tipped with clusters of rusty brown hairs. Flowers on short pedicels, 

 in crowded fascicles; calyx green, covered with pale hairs, divided into 5-9 short 

 rounded thin equal lobes; stamens with slender light yellow slightly flattened fila- 

 ments and dark red anthers; stigmas slightly exserted, reddish purple, papillose, 

 with soft white hairs. Fruit ripening when the leaves are about half grown, semi- 

 orbicular, rounded and bearing the remnants of the styles, or slightly emarginate at 

 the apex, rounded or wedge-shaped at the base, ^' broad, the seminal cavity coated 

 with thick rusty brown tomentum, the broad thin wing obscurely reticulate-veined, 

 naked on the thickened margin, and marked by the ^ark conspicuous horizontal line 

 of union of the two carpels; seed ovate, with a large oblique pale hilum, a light 

 chestnut-brown coat produced into a thin border wider below than above the middle 

 of the seed. 



A tree, 60-70 high, with a trunk occasionally 2 in diameter, spreading branches 



