ULMACE^. SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. 



59 



PLANERA. 



Flowers polygamo-monoecious ; calyx 4 or 5-lobed, the lobes imbricated in aestiva- 

 tion ; corolla ; stamens 4 or 5 ; filaments erect before anthesis ; disk ; ovary superior, 

 stipitate, 1-celled ; ovule solitary, suspended. Fruit drupaceous, muricate. Leaves 

 alternate, serrate, stipulate, deciduous. 



Nat 



Endlicher, Gen. Bentham & Hooker, Gen. iii. 352. — Engler & Prantl, 



276. — Meisner, Gen. 351. — Baillon, Hist. PL vi. 185. — Pflanzenfc 



A tree, with watery juice, scaly bark, slender terete unarmed slightly zigzag puherulous hranchlets 

 marked with scattered pale lenticels, and at the end of their first season with small nearly orbicular 

 leaf-scars in which appear a row of fibro-vascular bundle-scars^ and fibrous roots. Buds axillary/ 

 subglobose, minute^ covered with numerous thin closely imbricated chestnut-brown scales, the outer 

 more or less scarious on the margins ; the inner accrescent with the young shoot, at maturity ovate- 

 oblong, scarious, bright red, one third to nearly one half of an inch long, marking in falling the base of 

 the branchlet with numerous ring-like pale conspicuous scars. Leaves alternate, distichous, conduplicate 

 in vernation, ovate-oblong, acute or rounded at the narrowed apex, unequally wedge-shaped or rounded 

 at the base, coarsely crenulate-serrate with unequal gland-tipped teeth, petiolate with slender terete 

 puherulous petioles, penniveined, the numerous straight conspicuous veins forked near the margin, 

 connected by coarse reticulate veinlets more conspicuous below than above ; at first puherulous on the 

 lower and pilose on the upper surface, at maturity thick and subcoriaceous, scabrate, deciduous ; stipules 

 lateral, free, ovate, acute, scarious, bright red, caducous. Flowers articulate, minute, appearing with 

 the leaves in early spring, the staminate fascicled in the axils of the outer scales of leaf-bearing buds, 

 short-pedicellate, the pistillate or perfect on elongated puherulous pedicels in the axils of leaves of the 

 year in one to three-flowered fascicles. Pedicels ebracteolate. Calyx campanulate, divided nearly to 

 the base into four or five lobes, rounded at the apex, greenish yellow, often tinged with red, sub- 

 scarious, sub-marcescent. Stamens hypogynous, as many as the lobes of the calyx and opposite them ; 

 in the pistillate flower sometimes fewer or wanting ; filaments filiform, erect, exserted ; anthers broadly 

 ovate, emarginate, cordate, attached on the back below the middle, introrse, two-celled, the cells opening 

 longitudinally. Ovary ovate, stipitate, glandular-tuberculate, one-celled, narrowed into a short style 

 divided into two elongated spreading reflexed stigmas, papillo-stigmatic on the inner face ; wanting in 

 the staminate flower ; ovule solitary, suspended near the apex of the cell, anatropous ; micropyle 

 extrorse, superior. Fruit oblong, oblique, and narrowed below into a short stipe inclosed at the base by 

 the withered calyx, crowned with the remnants of the style ; pericarp crustaceous, fragile, prominently 

 ribbed on the anterior and posterior faces, irregularly crested with thin plates, light chestnut-brown, 

 puherulous, of two coats, the inner thin and papery, light chestnut-brown, and lustrous on the inner 

 surface. Seed ovoid-oblique, pointed at the apex, rounded below, exalbuminous ; testa thin, crustaceous, 

 lustrous, dark brown or nearly black, of two coats ; raphe inconspicuous. Embryo erect ; cotyledons 

 thick, unequal, bright orange-color, the apex of the larger cucuUate and sHghtly infolding the smaller, 

 much longer than the minute radicle turned toward the Hnear pale hilum. 



The wood of Planera is Hght, soft, not strong, close-grained, and contains numerous thin 

 medullary rays and occasional scattered open ducts. It is Hght brown, with thick nearly white sapwood 



1 Like Ulmus, Planera does not form a terminal bud, the end of 



axillary 



winter 



following- 



