ULMACE.E 



315 



branches for 30 or 40, divided into numerous stout spreading limbs forming a broad in- 

 versely conic round-topped head of long pendulous branches, or while young or on dry up- 

 lands a compact round head of drooping branches, and slender branchlets, tinged with red 

 and coated with soft pale pubescence when they first appear, becoming light reddish 

 brown, puberulous and marked by scattered minute lenticels and by small elevated semi- 

 orbicular leaf-scars showing the ends of 3 small fibro-vascular bundles, and furnished with 

 2 corky wings covered with lustrous brown bark, about \' broad and continuous except when 

 abruptly interrupted by lateral branchlets, or often irregularly developed. Winter-buds 

 broadly ovoid, acute, ' long, with closely imbricated chestnut-brown scales slightly puberu- 



Fig. 286 



lous on the outer surface, those of the inner ranks at maturity oblong, concave, rounded at 

 apex, thin, bright red, sometimes f long. Bark sometimes nearly 1' thick, light brown 

 slightly tinged with red, and deeply divided by interrupted fissures into broad flat ridges 

 broken on the surface into thick scales. Wood heavy, hard, strong, brittle, light brown 

 tinged with red, with thick lighter colored sapwood; in central Texas used in the manufac- 

 ture of the hubs of wheels, for furniture, and largely for fencing. 



Distribution. Valley of the Sunflower River, Mississippi (Morehead, Sunflower 

 County), through southern Arkansas, and Texas to Nuevo Leon, ranging in western Texas 

 from the coast to the valley of the Pecos River; in Arkansas usually on river cliffs and low 

 hillsides, and in Texas near streams in deep alluvial soil and on dry limestone hills; the 

 common Elm-tree of Texas and of its largest size on the bottom-lands of the Guadalupe 

 and Trinity Rivers. 



Occasionally planted as a shade- tree in the streets of the cities and towns of Texas. 



6. Ulmus serotina Sarg. Red Elm. 



Leaves oblong to oblong-obovate, acuminate, very oblique at base, coarsely and doubly 

 crenulate-serrate, when they unfold coated below with shining white hairs and puberulous 

 above, at maturity thin and firm in texture, yellow-green, glabrous and lustrous on the up- 

 per surface, pale and puberulous on the midrib and principal veins below, 2'-4' long, 1'- 

 lf wide, with a prominent yellow midrib, about 20 pairs of primary veins extending 

 obliquely to the points of the teeth and often forked near the margins of the leaf, and 

 numerous reticular veinlets ; turning clear orange-yellow in the autumn ; petioles stout, about 

 in length; stipules abruptly narrowed from broad clasping bases, linear-lanceolate, usu- 

 ally about j' long, persistent until the leaves are nearly fully grown. Flowers opening in 



