ROCK ELM; CORK ELM (Minus Thomasi, Sarg.). 80 to 100 feet. Tall-trunked, rugged, stiff-looking tree with narrow, round head. Bark shaggy on large limbs and trunk, which is gray tinged with red, and irregularly cleft into broad, flat, smly ridges. Twigs stiff, pubescent, with warty leaf-scars and lenticels, at length ridged with 3 or 4 uneven, corky idges. Wood like that of preceding species but superior in strength and flexibility. Used for same purposes. Leaves 2 to 21 inches long, oblong-oval, pointed at both ends, scarcely oblique. at base, coarsely saw-toothed, with finer serrations, thick, firm, smooth above, paler, pubescent below, especially on veins. Flowers in drooping racemes, each flower stalked,
pubescent, with green calyx tinged with red toward its 5 to 7 cleft rim. Fruit clustered, each a inch long, ovate, flattened, with broad wing encircling the seed. Ripe and wind-sown early in summer. Dist.: Bluffs and dry uplands or low, heavy clay soils, Quebec and Ontario and adjoining states; west to Nebraska and Missouri. Most abundant and finest in Ontario and Michigan.