ELM FAMILY 
twenty, tiny, reddish brown blossoms. In cities where the 
elm is a common tree the sidewalks are strewn with these 
discarded bud scales, but the flowers are so small, so 
brown and so high that the world walks by, thinking, 
“The elm never blossoms.” Six weeks later the same 
sidewalks are covered with little, 
an inch long, often as unnoticed as the blossoms which 
preceded them. 
The typical outline form of the elm is triangular, though it 
is inclined to vary with location and opportunity. Probably 
the best description of the varied forms of the elm is found 
in the report of George B. Emerson upon the Trees and 
Shrubs of Massachusetts. He says: “From a root, which 
in old trees, spreads much above the surface of the ground, 
the trunk rises to a considerable height in a single stem. 
Here it usually divides into two or three principal branches, 
which go off by a gradual and easy curve. These stretch 
upward and outward with an airy sweep—become horizon- 
tal, the extreme branchlets and sometimes the extreme half 
of the limb, pendent, forming a light and regular arch.” 
“The American elm affects many different shapes, all of 
flat, green samaras half 
them beautiful. Of these, three are most striking and dis- 
tinct. The tall Etruscan vase is formed by four or five 
limbs, separating at twenty or thirty feet from the ground, 
going up with a gradual divergency to sixty or seventy, and 
there bending rapidly outward, forming a flat top with a pen- 
dent border. The single or compound plume is represented 
by trees stretching up in single stem, or two or three paral- 
lel limbs to the height of seventy or even a hundred feet, and 
spreading out in one or two light feathery plumes. The elm 
often assumes a character akin to that of the oak ; that is 
when it has been transplanted young from an open situation 
and allowed always to remain by itself. It is then a broad 
round-headed tree.” 
The leaves come out of the bud a pale tender green and 
folded like little fans. They appear late because the flower- 
ing and fruiting is virtually over before their arrival. Cling- 
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