The Elms and the Hackberries 



surface rough both ways, stiff, harsh. Flowers, April, before 

 leaves, fascicled, numerous. Fruits, May, rounded, hairy, only 

 on seed, wing not ciliate, margined. Preferred habitat, fertile 

 soil along streams. Distribution, lower St. Lawrence River, 

 through Ontario to Dakota and Nebraska; south to Florida; 

 west to Texas. Uses: Wood used as fence posts and railroad 

 ties; for wheel hubs, sills and agricultural implements. Mucila- 

 ginous inner bark used to allay fever and inflammation. 



The slippery elm disregards the laws of symmetry. Each 

 limb strikes out for itself. It is not unusual to find a tree quite 

 one sided in form. Shoots 6 feet in length are often seen as the 

 growth of a single season, where a broken limb gives an ambitious 

 bud a chance. The roughness of its foliage to the touch is one 

 of the striking characteristics of this tree. The leaves are covered 

 with harsh, tubercular hairs, and the crumbling of a leaf grates 

 most unpleasantly on the ear. Then, there is a tawny pubescence 

 on young shoots, and especially on the bud scales of this elm. 

 In winter this is the best distinguishing mark of the red elm. 

 The large flower buds are below the pointed leaf buds on the 

 youngest shoots. 



The bark is brownish grey, and rough alike on trunk and 

 branches. Everything, in fact, about the slippery elm seems 

 coarser than in its relatives. The leaves are often 8 to lo inches 

 long on vigorous shoots. 



Under the bark is a mucilaginous, sweet substance that gives 

 this elm its common name. What man lives who in the heydey 

 of youth has not had the spring craze for slippery-elm bark, as 

 surely as he had the chicken pox and the measles! The trees 

 in every fence row show the wounds of many a jack-knife, for in 

 the spring its cambium waxes thick and sweet and fragrant — to 

 growing boys, a delectable substance that allayed both hunger 

 and thirst. Fortunate for the longevity of the individual trees, 

 the bark of the limbs is most easily stripped off, so many a veteran 

 supplies boys to-day, which served as well a former generation. 

 The bark, dried and ground, mixed with milk, forms a valuable 

 food for invalids. Poultices are made of it to relieve throat and 

 chest troubles. It is also useful in allaying fevers and acute 

 inflammatory disorders. This bark, first used as a home remedy, 

 has now an established place on the apothecary's shelf, and is 

 used by physicians of both schools. The problem of the supply 



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