298 TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



with red when they first appear, dark red during their first winter, and ultimately 

 reddish brown or ashy gray. Bark about \' 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 mouths of every year, 

 from the valley of the Cape Fear River, North Carolina, to western Florida, and 

 through southern Alabama and Mississippi to the valley of the Trinity River, Texas, 

 and northward through western Louisiana and Arkansas to southern Missouri, cen- 

 tral Kentucky, and the valley of the lower Wabash River, Illinois; comparatively 

 rare, and only in the neighborhood of the coast in the Atlantic and east Gulf 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 or rarely 4 or 

 5-nerved, membranaceous or subcoriaceous, deciduous; stipules lateral, free, usually 

 scarious, inclosing their leaf in the bud, caducous. Flowers polygamo-mouoecious or 

 rarely monoecious, appearing soon after the unfolding of the leaves, minute, pedi- 

 cellate on branches of the year, the staminate cymose or fascicled at their base, the 

 pistillate solitary or in few-flowered fascicles from the axils of upper leaves; calyx 

 divided nearly to the base into 4 or 5 lobes, greenish yellow, deciduous; stamens in- 

 serted 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 recurved in the perfect flower; anthers ovate, 

 attached on the back just above the emarginate base; ovary ovate, 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 globoate drupe tipped with the remnants 

 of the style, with thin flesh covered by a thick firm skin, and a thick-walled bony 

 smooth or rugose nutlet. Seed filling the seminal cavity; albumen scanty, gelati- 

 nous, nearly inclosed between the folds of the cotyledons, or 0; testa membra- 

 naceous, of 2 confluent 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. The North American species vary 

 greatly in the form of their leaves in different parts of the country, and it is not 

 improbable that a larger number of species than are here enumerated may be conven- 

 iently recognized when these trees can be more fully studied. 



Celtis was the classical name of a species of Lotus. 



CONSPECTUS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN ARBORESCENT SPECIES. 



Leaves ovate to ovate-lanceolate, sharply and coarsely serrate. 



1 C. occidentalis (A, B, C, F). 



Leaves ovate-lanceolate, ovate or oblong-lanceolate, entire or occasionally obscurely and 

 remotely serrate, thin or in one form subcoriaceous. 



2. C. Mississippiensis (A, C, E, G, H). 



