#57 CHINESE ZELKOVA
Zelkova sinica
This tree is in the centre of the Chinese and Japanese Section.
County Champion
| Distribution: | Native to central and eastern China |
| Planting Date: | 1927 |
| Appearance: | A deciduous tree, up to 18 m high, with a trunk up to 150 cm in girth. Young shoots are greyish and woolly in the early part of the season, becoming bright brown and glossy by autumn. |
| Leaf: | Leaves firm in texture, alternate, ovate to ovate-lanceolate, rounded at the base, the apex mostly slenderly pointed, the margins coarsely toothed, ciliate; veins seven to twelve each side of the midrib, each one running out to the point of a marginal tooth, 2.5 cm to 6 cm long, 1.8 cm to 3 cm wide, dark dull green and harsh to the touch above, greyish beneath and downy especially on the midrib and veins; petiole very short and downy. |
| Fruit: | Fruits are usually solitary, produced from the under-side of the leaf-axils, veined, very shortly stalked, roughly obovoid, 6 mm wide. |
| Tree height and girth in 2023 | Height 13 m and girth 115 cm |
| Uses: | A well-known landscaping tree in China, it is also used as a street tree in a number of European and U.S. cities. |
| Plant Hunter: | Introduced by Ernest Wilson to the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard Universiy, Boston, in 1908 and to Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in 1920, when seeds were received from Vilmorin, Andrieux & Co, Paris. |
| Anecdotes and Comments | Rated in 2023 County champion by girth and height, The Tree Register |