Genus Ulmus, L. (Elm)

Leaves - simple; alternate; edge sharply and often doubly toothed. Outline - oval or egg-shaped, or inversely egg-shaped; always one-sided. Apex - taper-pointed. Base - rounded, or slightly heart-shaped, rarely pointed. Leaf/Stem - about one quarter inch long. Buds - smooth. Leaf - usually two to five inches long, and one and a half to two and a half wide; somewhat downy when young, afterward roughish below; above, either rough in one direction, or (especially if taken from the ends of the long branches) smooth and shining. Ribs - prominent and straight. Bark - of the branches not marked with “corky ridges"; branchlets, smooth. Seeds - flat egg-shaped or oval, winged and fringed all around. Last of May. Found - northward to Southern Newfoundland; southward to Florida; westward to the Black Hills of Dakota. Toward the western and southwestern limits it is found only in the river-bottom lands. General Information - One of the very noblest of American trees, eighty feet or more in height, and of strong and graceful proportions. The trunk divides at a slight angle into two or three arching limbs, and these again into many smaller curving and drooping branches. The trunk and the larger branches are often heavily fringed with short and leafy boughs. The tree is widely cultivated. Streets planted with it become columned and arched like the aisles of a Gothic cathedral. The wood is hard, and very tough from the interlacing of its fibers. It is used in making saddle-trees and for wheel-hubs, and is now largely exported to England to be used in boat- and ship-building. One day I found four men in a stone quarry, working with iron bars and rollers over a heavy flat slab. They were moving the stone slowly up a narrow plant into their cart. “John, “ I said, “I would not think that board could hold a stone of such weight two minutes. Is it hickory?” “No sir, “ said John, “ that’s an elm plank; it can’t break.” It did not break. It was one of the woods which the Deacon used in building his famous “one-hoss shay": So the deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That count n’t be split nor bent nor broke, - That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The cross-bars were ash, from the straightest trees; The panels of whitewood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for thing like these; The hubs of logs from the Settler’s Ellum; - Last of its timber, - they could n’t sell ‘em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;” --Oliver Wendell Holmes

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