228 FLOWERS OF THE ROADSIDES AND HEDGES 
lace-like in outline. The bole is stout and erect, with stout buttresses 
in old trees. The buds are dull brown, with many scales, each being 
really a pair of stipules, the lowest pair not lengthening in spring, 
There are several enclosing the leaf-bud within. The outermost scales 
serve to protect the inner from cold in winter. A pair of scales protects 
the leaves, and they are united to the base of the stem each side of the 
leaf-stalk. The scales fall at length. The leaf is folded up in bud upon 
the midrib. It is closed up in a fan-like manner on the lateral veins. 
The flowers are not borne in catkins as in the other trees which 
belong to the Amentiferae, but are in tufted clusters. The perianth is 
cup-like, 4—5-fid, the lobes fringed with hairs, and contains five or four 
stamens with purple anthers, and a central pistil. There are two 
chambers in the ovary, but only one develops, and that rarely matures. 
The flower-stalk is short. The flowers appear before the leaves. 
They are vinous-red in colour. The fruit is an inversely ovate, or 
elliptic-oblong samara, notched, with the seed above the centre and 
near the notch. There is a wing all round the seed except at the 
notched apex, the lobes of the notch being incurved. The samara is 
greenish-brown or brown. 
The Common Elm flowers in March, and is a deciduous tree. 
Most trees are pollinated by the wind, and it is supposed that this 
mode of pollination is the most primitive. However this may be, the 
trees usually flower before the leaves are in bud, and have the parts 
of the flower especially modified to this end. 
The Elm has usually hermaphrodite or complete flowers, but may 
be sometimes moneecious. The perianth is a bell-shaped structure with 
a variable number of teeth, or segments, and tubular below. It is hairy 
on the lower part, and the teeth are sparingly glandular. The pistil lies 
in the centre surmounted by a bifid stigma, with papilla on the inner 
face and pectinate glandular structures or hairs. There are as many 
stamens as perianth-lobes. The stigma is usually said to ripen before 
the anthers, as is usually the case in wind-pollinated flowers, but some- 
times the anthers ripen first. There are 2 anther-cells, and they open 
outwards. Soon after the stigma matures the anther-stalks lengthen, 
and if the stigma be still receptive, pollen falling on the stigmas, the 
flower will be self-pollinated. In the ordinary course pollen is blown 
upwards to another flower on the same tree. When the anthers have 
withered the style lengthens and the stigma protrudes from the peri- 
anth, in which it was at first included. In spite of its adaptation to 
cross-pollination by the wind the Common Elm does not, in England, 
set perfect seed as a rule. Personally, the writer is inclined to attribute 
