AMERICAN ELM. 



503 



Hudson, above the Highlands, where there is a fine tree which annually flowers 

 in April or May. 



13. U. A. DiMiDiATA. Dlmldicite-leaved America7i Elm; Ubnns dimidiata, oi 

 Rafinesque; a shrub with smooth, angular branchlets, native of Georgia and 

 Florida, and growing from eight to twelve feet in height. The leaves, which 

 are borne on short petioles, are of two forms, from one to two inches in length, 

 all of a pale colour, sub-coriaceous texture, equally serrate, with the base very 

 oblique, often one side decurrent, and the other reduced in size or dimidiate; that 

 is, in the narrow leaves the base of one side is removed upwards of the petiole, 

 and is much reduced in its dimensions. 



14. U. A. OPACA. Densely-shaded American Elm; Ubnus opaca^ of Nuttall ; 

 Orme opaque^ of the French; Undurchsic/Uige Ulme^ of the Germans. This 

 curious elm was discovered in 1818, by 



Mr. Nuttall, near the confluence of Kiam- 



esha and Red Rivers, in the territory of . -v \a ./i^if . nj^ 



Arkansas. He describes it as forming a 



majestic, spreading tree, with smooth and 

 brownish branchlets, of the dimensions 

 of the ordinary oak, and remarkable for 

 the smallness and thickness of its oblique 

 and unusually blunt leaves, which, with 

 their short stalks, are only about an inch 

 in length, and half as broad as they are 

 long; they are very numerous, close 

 together, scabrous, with minute papillae, 

 are of a somewhat shining and deep- 

 green above, and paler beneath; they are oblong-ovate; mostly obtuse, doubly 

 denticulated, oblique at the base, as well as the whole outline, with one half 

 much narrower than the other; and the nerves on the under side, are pubescent, 

 strong, pennate, simple or forked. The flowers are fasciculated in small num- 

 bers, and occur on short peduncles. The samarae are of an elliptic form, rather 

 deeply bifid at the summit, and covered with a dense, somewhat ferruginous 

 pubescence, even when ripe. The density of shade produced by this tree, adds 

 Mr. Nuttall, " so crowded with rigid leaves, and the peculiarity of its appearance, 

 entitle it to a place in the nurseries of the curious, and it is probably quite hardy 

 enough for all temperate climates. To this species Virgil's epithet, 



'Foecundae frondibus ulmi.' 



might more justly be applied than to any other."* 



Geography and History. The Ulmus americana is indigenous to North Amer- 

 ica from Nova Scotia to Louisiana. It appears to be the most multiplied, and 

 attains the greatest dimensions, within the territory situated between the forty- 

 first and forty-sixth degrees of north latitude, which comprises the principal parts 

 of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, 

 and of the states of New England and New York. In the middle states, and 

 farther southward, it becomes less multiplied; but west of the Alleghanies, it is 

 particularly abundant in ah the fertile bottoms watered by the streams that swell 

 the Mississippi and the Ohio, which are inundated by the floods of spring. 



This species was introduced into Germany in the early part of the XVllIth cen- 

 tury, and one of the first-planted trees is still growing at Schwobbache, near Pyr- 

 mont, in Westphalia. It does not appear to have been propagated in Britain, 

 however, before the year 1752, when it was planted at Mile End, London, by 



* North American Sylva, p. ."'6. 



