136 ULMACE^ 



and stigmas 2 ; fruit 1 or 2-eelled, not bursting, drupe-like, or furnished 

 with a leafy border ; seed pendulous. The order consists of shrubs or trees, 

 with rough stipuled leaves, and flowers in clusters, often important for their 

 use as timber. 



Elm (Ulmus). — Perianth bell-shaped, 4 — 9-eleft, persistent; stamens 

 usually 5 ; styles 2 ; capsule thin and leaf-like. Name considered by Sir 

 W. J. Hooker as derived from the Hebrew vJ, to be strong or vigorous. 



Elm (U I inns). 



1. Common Klm(U. siiberusa).- — Leaves tapering to a short point, more 

 or less doubly serrate ; flowers small, 4 — 5-cleft ; segments fringed ; fruit 

 inversely egg-shaped, deeply cloven ; seed-cavity chiefly above the middle of 

 the fruit and near the notch ; perennial. Several varieties of this tree occur 

 in Great Britain, but their characters are not constant ; in one the leaves 

 are rough above and downy below, and small, being from one to three inches 

 long, and this form is common throughout England. In the Ulmns major of 

 some Avriters, a variety found in the neighbourhood of London, the leaves, 

 fruit, and flowers are much larger, and from two and a half to five inches in 

 length, and rough above and downy below ; while in a form often described 

 as U. glabra the leaves are somewhat leathery, shining, smooth or slightly 

 rough above, and smooth except in the axils of the veins beneath : the young 

 leaves, stipules, and fruit have scattered glands, and the branches are droop- 

 nig. This form occurs chiefly in the south of England, while a variety 

 similar to it in other respects, but having its branches rigid, erect, and close, 

 is sometimes described as U. strict a. It is found in Cornwall and North 

 Devon. The stately Elm is an early-leafing tree, yet its twigs are sometimes 

 darkened by its innumerable flowers long before its leaf-buds have unfolded. 



It is a large tree, one of the tallest to be seen in our English landscape ; 

 and its foliage, though rich and full, hanging so loosely as to form a 

 chequered shade by the light which comes down between its dark masses. 

 Its trunk is usually erect, and so rough, that Gray's epithet of the "rugged 

 Elm " is very appropriate. The young branches are hairy ; but, as they 

 grow older, they become covered with the cracked rugged excrescence 

 to which the species owes its name. The ti^ee attains a great age, and 

 when growing in a good soil it will live for five or six hundred years, 

 and even then furnish good timber. Its wood is strong and close-grained, 

 and being uninjured by water, is used in ship-building ; the inner bark is 

 made into bast, mats, and ropes, and in former times the foliage served as 

 fodder for cattle — a purpose to which it is still applied on the Continent. 

 The flowers are at first enveloped in scale-like buds, and the young twigs 

 are thickly beset with them. They expand in March, and disclose the 

 purple calyx with stamens of the same hue, and a cleft ovary bearing two 

 styles. The tree seems covered with these flowers almost as thickly as it is 

 afterwards clothed with leaves; and as the flowers wither, they are succeeded 

 by the thin, membranous, notched seed-vessel, and the enclosed seed is 

 borne, as on a wing, by the wild winds of early spring to the distant soil, 

 or scattered by hundreds around the trunk of the tree. Clusters of these 

 flat seed-vessels so invest the tree, that they look at a distance like foliage. 



