The buds are covered with brown scales, which are hairy on the edges.  The flower-buds are larger than the leaf-buds and are in the axils of the lower leaves of the preceding year.  Each leaf in the bud is enclosed by a pair of scales.  They are so small that the pupils, unused to delicate work, will hardly discover them.  Under a glass they can be seen to be ovate, folded on the midrib with the inner face within (conduplicate), and with an ovate scale joined to the base of the leaf on either side.  The scales thus show themselves to be modified stipules.  The venation of the leaves is very plain.  The scales are much larger than the leaves.  The flower-buds contain a cluster of flowers, on slender green pedicels.  The calyx is bell-shaped, unequal, and lobed.  The stamens and pistil can be seen.  The flower-clusters do not seem to leave any mark which is distinguishable from the leaf-scar.

[Illustration:  FIG. 16.—­American Elm. 1.  Branch in winter state:  a, leaf-scars; b, bud-scars; d, leaf-buds; e, flower-buds. 2.  Branch, with staminate flower-buds expanding. 3.  Same, more advanced. 4.  Branch, with pistillate flowers, the leaf-bud also expanding.]

The leaf-scars are small and extend about half around the stem.  The arrangement is alternate on the one-half plan.  There are three dots on the scar.

The rings are quite plain.  The tree can be used to make tables of growth, like those of the Beech.

The buds will probably be too small for examination by the pupils, at present, but their position and development can be studied, and are very instructive.  As the leaf-buds are all on the ends of the branchlets, the twigs and branches will be just below the bud-rings, and then there will be a space where no twigs nor branches will be found, till the next set of rings is reached.  This gives the branches more room to develop symmetrically.  The terminal buds do not develop in the Elm, in old trees, the bud axillary to the last leaf of the season taking its place, and most of the other axillary buds growing also.  This makes the tree break out into very fine spray.  A tree like the Elm, where the trunk becomes lost in the branches, is called deliquescent; when the trunk is continued to the top of the tree, as in the Spruce, it is excurrent.

The small, feathery twigs and branches that are often seen on the trunks and great limbs of the elm grow from buds which are produced anywhere on the surface of the wood.  Such buds are called adventitious buds.  They often spring from a tree when it is wounded.