324 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



midrib, slender veins arcuate and united near the margins, and inconspicuous reticulate 

 veinlets; petioles slender, glabrous, \'-\' in length. Flowers on slender glabrous pedicels; 

 calyx divided into five ovate-lanceolate glabrous or puberulous scarious lobes furnished 

 at apex with tufts of long white hairs. Fruit on glabrous pedicels shorter or slightly longer 

 than the petioles, ripening in September, short-oblong to ellipsoid or obovoid, orange- 

 red or yellow, \' in diameter; nutlet slightly rugose. 



Fig. 295 



A tree, 60-80 high, with a trunk 2-3 in diameter, spreading or pendulous branches 

 forming a broad head, and slender branchlets light green, glabrous or pubescent when they 

 first appear, and during their first winter bright reddish brown, rather lustrous and marked 

 by oblong pale lenticels and narrow elevated horizontal leaf-scars showing the ends of 

 three fibro- vascular bundles; often much smaller. Winter-buds ovoid, pointed, rV-F 

 long, with chestnut-brown puberulous scales. Bark \'-\' thick, pale gray and covered with 

 prominent excrescences. Wood soft, not strong, close-grained, light yellow, with thick 

 lighter-colored sapwood; commercially confounded with the wood of Celtis occidentalis 

 and its varieties, and used for the same purposes. 



Distribution. Coast of Virginia to the Everglades Keys of southern Florida, through 

 the Gulf states to the valley of the lower Rio Grande in Nuovo Leon, and through eastern 

 Texas, Arkansas and Missouri to eastern Oklahoma to the valley of the Washita River 

 (Zarvin County) and to Kiowa County, eastern Kansas, central Tennessee and Kentucky, 

 and to southern Illinois and Indiana; in Bermuda. 



Often planted as a shade and street tree in the valley of the Mississippi River and in 

 Texas. 



An arborescent form from the rocky banks of the Nueces River, western Texas, with 

 shorter and thicker leaves is distinguished as var. brachyphylla Sarg.; and a small shrubby 

 form with oblong-ovate cordate leaves and dark purplish fruit covered with a glaucous 

 bloom, growing in deep sand in Callihan County, Texas, has been described as var. anomala 

 Sarg. An Arizona form is 



Celtis laevigata var. brevipes Sarg. 



Celtis brevipes S. Wats. 



Leaves ovate, acuminate, unsymmetrically rounded or cuneate at base, entire or rarely 

 furnished with occasional teeth, glabrous, dark green and smooth on the upper surface, 

 yellow-green on the lower surface, with small clusters of pale hairs in the axils of the slen- 

 der veins, and inconspicuous reticulate veinlets, l^'-2' long, '-!' wide; petioles slender, 



