irregular plates. Branchlets covered with dense, white pubescence. Leaves (Plate 267, Fig. 6), slightly coriaceous, about 3 inches long and 11⁄2 inch wide, oval-lanceolate, acute at the apex, cordate and unequal at the base, with nine to eleven pairs of nerves, each ending in a crenate serration, the apex of which is minutely pointed ; margin ciliate; upper surface dark green, with scattered minute pubescence ; lower surface more or less covered with white pubescence, densest on the midrib and nerves; petiole, 1⁄8 to 3⁄16 inch, pubescent.
Fruit, about 1⁄5 inch long, pubescent, with a very slight depression on either side of the prominent ridge on the upper surface.
In winter the twigs are pubescent, and bear elongated conical buds, which are brownish, tinged with white in colour, owing to the scales, which are glabrous on the surface, being fringed with long, white cilia.
This species is readily distinguished by the pubescent oval leaves, acute and not acuminate at the apex, the serrations only showing minute points. Z. acuminata has glabrous ovate leaves, with a long acuminate apex, the serrations ending in long, sharp, often recurved points.
Distribution
This species occurs in the Russian provinces, lying south of the main range of the Caucasus, and in northern Persia, in the territory bordering on the Caspian Sea, extending as far eastward as Asterabad.
The best account of its distribution in Transcaucasia is given by Scharrer,’ who states that it grows wild in two distinct areas, one in the government of Kutais and the other in Talysch, while there are a few scattered trees at Araxes, in the Karabagh district. In Kutais it grows in the Mingrelian plain, east of Sennakh, and ascends in the lower mountains of Imeritia to about 1000 feet, occurring at low levels in small groups in the oak forests, and at higher elevations mixed with ash, maple, and beech, and never forming pure woods. In Talysch it is not found on the marshy plains, but is common in river valleys, ascending on the mountains to 5000 feet, and often forming pure and dense woods. Scharrer measured a tree, 100 feet in height, with a stem 8 feet in diameter and free of branches to sixty feet. The climate in which it thrives is humid, with a rainfall of 50 or 60 inches; and it requires a moist, permeable, rich soil to come to perfection. At Tiflis, however, where the rainfall is only 19} inches, the tree is met with growing on good loamy soil and on rocky mountain slopes, but is slower in growth than in Mingrelia. It has borne without injury a temperature of - 24° C.
The elder Michaux,’ who travelled in Persia in 1782, and saw the tree growing in the forests of Ghilan, states that it commonly attains a height of 80 feet, with a girth of 9 to 12 feet, with a straight trunk, branching at about thirty feet up, and resembling the hornbeam in its bark, fluted trunk, and mode of branching. Scharrer, however, states that in the forest it produces clean stems, very uniform in thickness
1 Gartenflora, xxxvi. 187 (1887).
2 Cf, André Michaux, Mémoire sur le Zelkoua (Paris, 1831).
