FOREST TREES IN THEIR WINTER CONDITION 133 



9. The White Elm. Ulmus Americana. 



This is one of our most beautiful native trees. It is often 

 from one hundred to one hundred and twenty feet high, and 

 its large, spreading branches, with slender, drooping branch- 

 lets, often form a crown a hundred feet or more across. 

 Sometimes you find in grainfields magnificent, solitary elms 

 with a beautiful, symmetrical crown seventy or eighty feet 

 above the ground. Do you think that the farmer pruned 

 the tree of its lower branches and thus compelled it to form 

 that grand crown which you can see at a distance of many 

 miles ? 



The bark of the white elm is ashy gray, and irregularly 

 divided by deep fissures into broad ridges. 



The branchlets of the last season are dark brown and 

 minutely hairy. The second year they assume a grayish- 

 brown color and are smooth but not lustrous. 



The buds are dark brown and smooth. Those which con- 

 tain flowers increase in size very early in the season. 



The Slippery Elm, Ulmus fulva, has downy, rust-brown 

 buds ; the Corky Elm, Ulmus racemosa, also has downy 

 buds, but its young branches are covered with a rough, corky 

 bark. 



10. The Butternut, or Oilnut. Juglans cinerea. 



A fine tree from fifty to seventy-five feet high, generally 

 dividing fifteen to twenty feet from the ground into numer- 

 ous stout limbs, which spread horizontally and form a broad, 

 symmetrical, round-topped head. Bark, strong-scented, gray 

 or brown, deeply divided into broad, flat ridges. Young 

 trees and branches smooth and light gray. Branchlets stout, 

 generally dusky-green the first year ; slightly hairy, gradually 

 becoming gray; leaf-scars remaining very conspicuous for 

 several years; pith of the twigs light to dark brown, con- 

 sisting of transversely arranged plates; buds terminat- 



