68 



SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. ulmace^. 



(1848) ; De Candolle Prodr. xvii. 178. — Walpers, Ann. Celtis occidentalis, var. Audibertiana, Koch, Dendr. ii. 



iii. 396. 



433 (1872). — Dippel, Handh. Lauhholzk. ii. 43. 



Celtis occidentalis, var. crassifolia, Gray, Man. ed. 2, ? Celtis occidentalis, c grandidentata, Dippel^ Handh 



397 (1856). — Koch, Dendr, ii. 433. Lauhholzk. ii. 44 (1892). 



Celtis reticulata, Cooper, Am. Nat. iii. 407 (not Torrey) 



(1869). — Hall, Bot. Gazette, ii. 93. 



A tree^ sometimes a hundred and thirty feet in height^ with a straight slender trunk two and a half 

 to three feet in diameter, and often free of branches for seventy or eighty feet ; usually much smaller, and 

 in the eastern states generally short-trunked, with stout spreading ridged or frequently pendulous 

 branches, which form a handsome round-topped head. The bark of the trunk is an inch to an inch 

 and a half in thickness, and is light brown or silvery gray, broken on the surface into thick appressed 

 scales, and sometimes roughened with irregular wart-Hke excrescences or ridges, which also appear on 

 the large branches. The branchlets, which are slender and slightly zigzag, and contain a thick Hght- 

 colored pith, are light green when they first appear, and glabrous or puberulous ; they gradually become 

 tinged with red, and in their first winter are bright red-brown and rather lustrous, and are marked with 

 horizontal semi-oval or oblong leaf-scars in which appear the ends of three fibro-vascular bundles ; they 

 grow darker in their second or third year, when they become dark brown slightly tinged with red. 

 The buds are axillary,^ ovate, pointed, flattened by the pressure of the stem, about a quarter of an inch 

 long, and covered by three pairs of chestnut-brown ovate acute pubescent caducous scales loosely 

 imbricated in two ranks, increasing in size from without inward and gradually passing into the stipules 

 of the lower leaves. The leaves are conduplicate in the bud, with slightly involute margins, each leaf 

 being inclosed by its stipules ; they are broadly ovate, more or less falcate, gradually or abruptly 

 contracted into long narrow points, rounded and usually very obhque at the base, serrate with coarse 

 incurved callous-tipped teeth, except at the ends which are mostly entire, and three-ribbed ; when they 

 unfold they are pale yellow-green, coated on the lower surface and on the petioles with soft silky white 

 hairs, and pilose on the upper surface ; and at maturity they are thin, light green and lustrous, smooth, 

 scabrate or scabrous above, and paler and glabrous or slightly hairy below on the prominent midribs and 

 primary veins which are arcuate and united near the margins and connected by conspicuous reticulate 

 thick veinlets ; they are two and a half inches to four inches long and one to two inches wide, and are 

 borne on slender slightly grooved hairy petioles one half to two thirds of an inch in length. The stipules 

 are caducous, linear-strap-shaped, white and scarious and nearly half an inch lono;, or on sterile shoots 

 they are ovate, acute, concave, and sometimes two thirds of an inch long and a quarter of an inch wide. 

 The leaves turn to a light yellow color late in the autumn before falling. The flowers appear in early 

 spring soon after the unfolding of the leaves, and are borne on slender drooping pedicels. The calyx 

 is light yellow-green, and is divided nearly to the base, usually into five linear acute thin and scarious 

 lobes rounded on the back, and more or less laciniately cut at the apex, which is tinged with red and 

 often tipped with a tuft of pale hairs. In the sterile flower the stamens are inserted on the margin of 

 the thickened torus, which is coated with thick white tomentum 3 the filaments are white, glabrous, 

 sKghtly flattened, and gradually narrowed from the base to the apex ; before anthesis they are incurved 

 above the middle, the anthers being face to face in the bud, and, straightening abruptly as the flower 

 opens, they become sHghtly incurved and exserted ; the anthers are oblong, emarginate, and attached 



on the back below the middle, and are extrorse, nodding rather obliquely on the expanded filaments ; 

 in the perfect flower the filaments are slightly incurved in the bud, but do not straisrhten or lengthen 



after anthesis, the anthers remaining erect and included or slightly exserted from the calyx. The 

 ovary of the perfect flower is oblong-ovate, sessile on the discoid torus, which is covered with white 



1 The North American species of Euceltis, like Ulmus, do not upper axillary bud, which prolongs the branch the following season 

 form a terminal bud, the end of the branch withering and falling (Foerste, Bull Torrey Bot. Club, xx. 163, t. 147, f. 11). 

 off during the summer, leaving a minute orbicular scar close to the 



