28^. PAULOWNIA TOMENTOSA PRINCESS TREE. 37 



PHYSICAL PROPERTIES. The wood is light, soft, not strong, easily 

 worked, and yields a beautiful satiny surface. Its wide annual rings 

 are marked by many bands of rather small open ducts, and medullary 

 rays are very inconspicuous. It is of a mottled purple-brown color 

 with very thin sap-wood of only one or two rings of growth. Specific 

 Gravity, 0.25. 



I SKS. As yet no particular use is made of this beautiful wood 

 in this country, but it would seem to be very suitable for handsome 

 interior furnishings and cabinet-ware. 



The tree is deservedly popular for ornamental planting, as it pro- 

 duces an annual display of very beautiful and fragrant flowers and 

 attractive umbrageous foliage, in regions south of the latitude of 

 Xow York, ^orth of that latitude the climate seems too severe for 

 it to produce its flowers and fruit and it generally winter-kills to the 

 ground annually. Each spring it then sends up vigorous shoots with 

 very large leaves, giving an effect very different from that of the 

 tree in more congenial climate farther south. 



ORDER ULMACE.2E: ELM FAMILY. 



Leaves deciduous, simple, petolate, alternate, in two ranks, serrate, pinnately 

 veined, unequal at base, conduplicate in the bud and with usually fugacious 

 stipules; buds with several scales. Flowers small, perfect, monoecious or poly- 

 gamous, clustered, or the pistillate solitary; calyx regular, 4-9 parted or lobed; 

 petals none; stamens as many as the lobes of the calyx and opposite them, with 

 straight exserted filaments and introrse 2-celled anthers opening longitudinally; 

 ovary 1 -celled with solitary, anatropous or amphitropous ovule suspended from 

 apex of the cell; styles two. Fruit a samara, drupe or nut; seed with little or no 

 albumen, straight or curved embryo, and usually flat cotyledons. 



Trees and shrubs with tough wood and of about one hundred and forty species 

 grouped in thirteen genera and widely distributed throughout the temperate 

 regions of the northern hemisphere. Five genera are represented in the United 

 States, and three of these by trees of the eastern and southern states. 



GENUS ULMUS, L. 



Leaves inquilateral. straight-veined and simply or doubly serrate; stipules 

 scarious caducous; buds with several closely imbricated scales in 2 ranks. 

 Flowers from axillary buds on twigs of the previous season's growth and usually 

 expanding before the leaves (or in autumn from the axils of the leaves of the 

 season), mostly perfect and in fascicles or racemes, with bibracteolate pedicels; 

 calyx campanulate. membranaceous persistent with 4-9 imbricated lobes; stamens 

 5-0. exserted with slender filaments and oblong anthers; ovary sessile or stalked, 

 compressed with 2 divergent styles stigmatic or inner faces, 1-celled and contain- 

 ing a single amphitropous ovule. Fruit a flat orbicular or oblong membranaceous 

 1 -seeded samara winged all around (or excepting apex), subtended by the withered 

 calyx and sometimes tipped with the remnants of the styles; seed compressed 

 with straight embryo and no albumen. 



T'lmus is the ancient Latin name of the Elm. 



Trees or rarely shrubs with scaly ridged bark, heavy tough wood and somewhat 

 zigzag branchlets, and of about eighteen species, of which six or seven are found 

 in eastern United States and four of these in the northeastern states. None are 

 found in the Pacific states. 



