Elm

a fine spreading tree, belonging to the same family as the nettle, the hop, and the mulberry. There are four elms in the eastern part of the United States. The wahoo elm, a small tree with winged, corky branches, Ohio Valley and southward; the rock elm, of which Oliver Wendell Holmes' parson built his wonderful one-hoss shay; the slippery elm held in fond memory for its delight-yielding inner bark; and the famous American or white elm, the finest shade tree on the continent. The trunk not infrequently attains a girth of sixteen feet. Volumes might be written on the types and individuality of the American elm. It is at once hardy, long-lived, and graceful. The native home of this elm is the rich soil along woodland rivers, but it withstands the trampling of village streets. New England is noted for its elm-lined streets. New Haven is sometimes called the City of Elms. The elm in Cambridge under which Washington took command of the Continental army is called the Washington Elm. Lowell called a volume of his poems, Under the Elms. The flowers have no petals. They come in early spring before the leaves. The fruit of the elm is a flat, circular seed, winged all around with a thin, brown membrane. The ripe fruit flies in the wind like chaff. The leaves are strongly straight-veined. They are short-petioled and are oblique or unequally heart-shaped at the base.