318 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



they first appear, dark red in their first winter, and ultimately reddish brown or ashy 

 gray. Bark about i' thick, light brown or gray, separating into large scales disclosing in 

 falling the red-brown inner bark. Wood light, soft, not strong, close-grained, light brown, 

 with thick nearly white sapwood of 20-30 layers of annual growth. 



Distribution. Swamps covered with water during several months of the year, or low 

 river banks; valley of the Cape Fear River, North Carolina, southward to northern Florida 

 (Bradford County) and westward usually not far from the coast through the Gulf states 

 to the valleys of the Navasota (Brazos County) and of the Colorado (Matagorda County) 

 Rivers, Texas, and northward through western Louisiana, eastern Oklahoma, and Arkan- 

 sas to southeastern Missouri, northeastern Mississippi (near luka, Tishomingo County, 

 T. G. Harbison)., northern Kentucky (Henderson County), and the valley of the lower 

 Wabash River, Illinois; comparatively rare and confined to the coast plain in the Atlan- 

 tic states; abundant and of its largest size in western Louisiana and southern Arkansas. 



3. CELTIS L. 



Trees or shrubs, with thin, smooth often more or less muricate bark, unarmed or spinose 

 branchlets, and scaly buds. Leaves serrate or entire, 3-nerved in one species, membrana- 

 ceous or subcoriaceous, deciduous; stipules lateral, free, usually scarious, inclosing their 

 leaf in the bud, caducous. Flowers polygamo-moncecious or rarely monoecious, appearing 

 soon after the unfolding of the leaves, minute, pedicellate, on branches of the year, the 

 staminate cymose or fascicled at their base, the pistillate solitary or in few-flowered fas- 

 cicles from the axils of upper leaves; calyx divided nearly to the base into 4 or 5 lobes, 

 greenish yellow, deciduous; stamens inserted on the margin of the discoid torus; filaments 

 subulate, incurved in the bud, those of the sterile flower straightening themselves abruptly 

 and becoming erect and exserted, shorter and remaining incurved in the perfect flower; 

 anthers ovoid, attached on the back just above the emarginate base; ovary ovoid, sessile, 

 green and lustrous, crowned with a short sessile style divided into diverging elongated 

 reflexed acuminate entire lobes papillo-stigmatic on the inner face and mature before the 

 anthers of the sterile flower, deciduous; minute and rudimentary in the staminate flower; 

 ovule anatropous. Fruit an ovoid or globose drupe tipped with the remnants of the style, 

 \vith thin flesh covered by a thick firm skin, and a thick-walled bony nutlet, reticulate- 

 pitted in the American species. Seed filling the seminal cavity ; albumen scanty, gelatinous, 

 nearly inclosed between the folds of the cotyledons, or 0; testa membranaceous, of 2 con- 

 fluent coats; chalaza colored, close to the minute hilum; embryo curved; cotyledons broad, 

 foliaceous, conduplicate or rarely flat, variously folded, corrugate, incumbent, or inclosing 

 the short superior ascending radicle. 



Celtis is widely distributed through the temperate and tropical regions of the world, 

 fifty or sixty species being distinguished. 



Trees of the American species are often disfigured by gall-making insects which distort 

 the buds and cause the production of dark broom-like clusters of short slender branchlets 

 at the end of the branches. 



Celtis was the classical name of a species of Lotus. . 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES. 



Fruit on pedicels much longer than the petioles. 



Leaves not covered below with conspicuous reticulate veinlets, green on both surfaces, 

 smooth or rough above; fruit dark purple. 1. C. occidentalis. 



Leaves covered below with a network of prominent veinlets, usually rough above. 

 Leaves pale on the lower surface. 



Leaves broadly ovate, obliquely rounded at base, coarsely serrate, glabrous or 

 slightly pilose below along the midrib and veins; fruit light orange-brown, the 

 pedicels often 3 or 4 times longer than the petioles. 2. C. Douglasii. 





