The wind helps by scattering pollen in the tree tops, and very soon the flowers are gone. The staminate trees turn green when the opening leaves lose their vivid red. The pistillate trees hang out red clusters of winged seeds below the opening leaf clusters. These red trees keep their name written plainly as long as the seed clusters swing.
Early in March, the side buds on the elm twigs begin to swell, and soon clusters of purplish flowers, small but very pretty, come out of the largest buds, and the tree top has a purplish haze upon it, that means that spring is coming. The bees come to get nectar from these early blossoms, but few people speak of the blossoming elms. They do not notice that elms ever blossom; and are rather incredulous when a spray is shown them covered with the graceful little tassels. “Who ever heard of elms having flowers?”
The truth is that every tree, when it is large enough, bears flowers. Not every one bears fruit, for some have pollen flowers only, the seeds being borne on the fertile trees. Elms have perfect flowers, and soon after the leaves open, the green fruits are seen in clusters, and before May passes, the seeds, each surrounded by an oval wing, flutter off in the wind.
THE AMERICAN ELM AND ITS KIN
Beautiful and stately, yet full of grace is the form of a big elm tree against the grey sky of a cloudy winter day. The tall trunk is crowned with many main branches, which spread into a widening funnel shape, subdividing into numberless smaller branches, whose direction is outward and downward. The numerous twigs have the droop of a weeping willow. The tree top is wonderful when every limb is bare.
In summer the same tree is a great fountain of green leaves. The long, leafy twigs of new wood are flung out to the wind, and the twinkling blades dazzle the eyes like spray. This is the time that we love the elm for its shade, and as an ornament to home grounds and parks. Roadside elms are the favourite nesting trees of the Baltimore oriole, whose hanging pocket of grasses and yarns swings at the end of a high outer branch.
When winter is still in the air, and snow on the landscape, the dark twigs of these bare elm trees change colour. It is the purple flower clusters that are flung out from opening buds in late March. It takes sharp eyes to see the cause of the wine-coloured flush in the tree top. With the opening of the leafy shoots in April, the trees get an added colour from the pale green seed discs that replace the flowers. These are winged, and they soon turn brown, and fly away on the first breeze. This is the elm’s way of sowing seeds. A crop of young elms grows each summer in fields and gardens near these seed trees. The leaf of the seedling is exactly after the pattern of the parental tree, but smaller.
The English elm is less graceful than our American tree. It has more the stature of the white oak. The head is compact, and the foliage mass thicker, and longer-lived. The robin red-breast nests close to the sturdy trunk, shielded by the earliest leaves.
An old couplet guides the farmer in the old country:
“When the elm leaf is as big as a mouse’s ear,