44 



SILVA OF NORTH AMEBIC A. 



ULMACE^. 



of 



nch long-, and covered with broadly ovate rounded bright chestnut-brown glabrous scales ; the 



& 



on vigorous 



shoots 



arly 



inner scales are bright green and glabrous, ovate, acute, and often 



inch lono- and a quarter of an inch broad, and gradually pass into the stipules of the later leaves. 



The leaves are obovate-oblong to oval, abruptly narrowed at the apex into long points, full and rounded 



the base 



side, and shorter and wedge-shaped on the other, and coarsely and doubly 



with slightly incurved 



hen they unfold they are coated on the lower surface with pale pubes 



cence, and are pilose on the upper surface with long scattered white hairs, and at maturity are four tc 

 six inches long, one to three inches wide, dark green and glabrous or scabrate above, and pale and soft 

 pubescent or sometimes glabrous below, with narrow pale midribs slightly impressed on the upper side, 

 and many slender straight primary veins running to the points of the teeth and connected by fine cross 



barely distinguishable on the upper surface ; they are borne on 



petioles a quarter of an 



inch in length, and turn bright clear yellow in the early autumn before falling. The stipules are linear- 



an inch to two thirds of an inch loner, caducous, liofht green, or on the latest leaves 



half 



white and 



thirds of an inch long, caducous, light 

 The inflorescence-buds are produced in the axils of several of the upper 



of 



the previous year, and are slightly larger than the leaf-buds ; from the axils of the seven or eight inner 

 scales, which are ciliate on the margins, and furnished at the apex with tufts of long soft white hairs, 

 the three or four-flowered short-stalked fascicles of flowers are produced on long slender drooping 

 pedicels sometimes an inch in length, those of the lateral flowers of the clusters being furnished at the 

 base with acute scarious bracts half an inch long, and two minute bractlets hairy at the apex. 

 The calyx, which is irregularly divided into seven to nine rounded lobes ciHate on the margins, and is 

 often somewhat obhque, is puberulous on the outer surface, and green tinged with red above the 

 middle, becoming chestnut-brown in fading. The stamens are exserted, with sHghtly flattened pale 

 filaments and bright red anthers which shed their pollen before the stigmas mature. The ovary is hght 

 green, ciliate on both margins with long white hairs, and is crowned with light green styles covered on 

 their stigmatic surface with white papillae. The fruit ripens as the leaves unfold, hanging on its long 

 stems in crowded clusters, and is ovate or obovate-oblong, shghtly stipitate, conspicuously reticulate- 

 venulose, half an inch long, and cihate on the margins, the sharp points of the wing being incurved, 

 and inclosing the deep notch. 



In British America Ulmus Americana is distributed from southern Newfoundland to the northern 

 shores of Lake Superior and the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, where it ascends the Sas- 

 katchewan to latitude 54° 30" north ; ^ it ranges south to Cape Canaveral and the shores of Pease 

 Creek in Florida, and westward in the United States to the Black Hills of Dakota,^ western Nebraska,^ 

 western Kansas,* the Indian Territory, and the vaUey of the Rio Concho in Texas.^ Less abundant 



d of smaller size in the south, in the north Ulmus Americana 



of the 



inhabitants 



of the forests which still cover 



bottom-lands, intervales, and low rich hills, and on the mid 



tinental plateau, with the Box Elder, the Green Ash, and the Cottonwood, it fines the banks of 



th a fringe of verdure 



The wood of Ulmus Americana is heavy, hard, strong, tough, difficult to split, and rather coarse- 

 grained ; it contains numerous thin medullary rays and rows of many large open ducts, clearly marking 

 the layers of annual growth, and is light brown, with thick somewhat lighter colored sapwood. The 

 specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.6506, a cubic foot weighing 40.55 pounds. It is largely 

 used for the hubs of wheels, for saddle-trees, in 



The bark was used bv the Inrlians. whp.n thpv ponld r\nt nrnnnrA TiiT^nli Kot-I^ in ^Yiolj-in^- flnoir ^onnoc • ^ 



flooring and cooperage, and in boat and ship building 



used by the Indians, when they could not procure Birch bark, in making their 

 d in some parts of the country whites and Indians twisted the tough inner bark into ropes 



44. — Bell, Geolog. Rep. Canada, 



1879-80, 48°. — Macoun, Cat. Can. PL 428. 



2 Winehell, Ludlow Rep. Black Hills, Dakota, 68. 



8 



Bessey, Rep. Nebraska State Board ofAgric. 1894, 104. 



of 



10. 



"" Havard, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus. viii. 506, 

 ^ Kalm, Travels, English ed. ii. 298. 

 ' Lawson, History of Carolina, 93. 



