Description :

• Deciduous trees, rarely shrubs, up to 40 m tall, with usually deeply furrowed bark; branches without spines
• Leaves singly or doubly serrate, pinnately veined, base usually asymmetric, glabrous, petiolate; stipules free, falling early
• Inflorescences fascicles, racemes, or cymes, pedunculate or subsessile, subtended by 2 bracts
• Flowers bisexual (rarely unisexual), pedicellate or sessile, on branches of previous season, appearing in spring before leaves
• Perianth slightly to deeply (4)5(-9)-lobed
• Stamens equal in number and opposite perianth lobes, usually exserted; anthers reniform, extrorse
• Ovary sessile or stipitate, compressed; styles short, deeply 2-lobed, persistent
• Fruit a flattened samara, with membranous wings
• Seed ovate, compressed; endosperm a single layer of thick-walled cells; embryo straight; cotyledons flat or slightly convex, fleshy
• x = 7 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Ulmus L.
  • Linnaeus: 225 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 106 (1754)
  • Adanson: 377 (1763)
  • Jussieu: 408 (1789)
  • Bentham: 351 (1880)
  • Engler: 62 (1889)
  • Tutin: 65 (1964)
  • Todzia: 608 (1993)
  • Zavada & Kim: 13 (1996)
  • Sherman-Broyles: 369 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 30, temperate and boreal regions of the northern hemisphere; the centre of distribution is apparently central and N Asia
• Southern Africa : Species 2, have been cultivated as ornamentals and occur as escapes, notably * Ulmus parvifolia Jacq. (Chinese elm) and * U. procera Salisb. (English elm)