Description
Ulmus thomasii grows as a tree from 50–100 feet (15–30 m) tall, and may live up to 300 years. Where forest-grown, the crown is cylindrical and upright with short branches, and is narrower than most other elms. Rock elm is also unusual among North American elms in that it is often monopodial. The bark is grey-brown and deeply furrowed into scaly, flattened ridges. Many older branches have 3-4 irregular thick corky wings. It is for this reason the rock elm is sometimes called the cork elm.
The leaves are 5 – 10 cm long and 2 – 5 cm wide, oval to obovate with a round, symmetrical base and acuminate apex. The leaf surface is shiny dark green, turning bright yellow in autumn; the underside is pubescent. The perfect apetalous, wind pollinated flowers are red-green and appear in racemes < 40 mm long two weeks before the leaves from March to May, depending on the tree's location. The fruit is a broad ovate samara 13 – 25 mm long covered with fine hair, notched at the tip, and maturing during May or June to form drooping clusters at the leaf bases.
Although U. thomasii is protandrous, levels of self-pollination remain high.
Read more about this topic: Ulmus Thomasii
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)