11ACKBERRY; NETTLE TREE; SUGAR BERRY (Ce/ii3 occi dentalis, Linn.). 50 to 125 feet. Round-topped tree, with long, bare, slender trunk. Twigs abundant, bushy, slender, on pendulous branches. Often bearing "witches' brooms." Bark thick, brown or silvery gray, broken into scaly plates by the shallow fissures, roughened by warty excrescences on trunk and limbs. Wood soft, coarse-grained, weak, pale yellow, used for fencing and for cheap furniture. Leaves broadly ovate, the petiole branching into 3 main veins, 2 to 4 inches long, oblique at base, serrate, above the middle, entire below; thin, dark green, with downy lining. Autumn color yellow.
elowers May, greenish; staminate in clusters at base of sea son's growth; pistillate solitary, in axils of leaves, with spread• ing, cleft stigmas, pale green. Fruit oblong, thin-fleshed berry, purple, sweet, hangs all winter. Dist.: Moist land along streams or swamps; southern Canada to Puget Sound; south to Florida, Texas, Missouri, and New Mexico.
The southern hackberry (C. Missiseippiensis, Bose.) is a smaller, more dainty edition of the northern hackberry. Its berry is orange, its leaves narrow, small-margined; its range 's the valley of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.