Elm money, also known as elm solid, elm seeds, elm kernel, elm pods kernel, is the winged fruit of the elm tree of the elm family. Shaped like money and small, white color into a string, because of its shape round and thin as coins, so named. Because it is the "money" of the harmonic, and thus have eaten elm money can have "money" said. Elm money is inconspicuous, but contains rich nutrients, not only delicious, but also can prevent diseases and health care. In the year of famine, is a life-saving hunger food. [1]

Produced in China, in the cold temperate, temperate and subtropical regions with distribution, can be edible, medicinal and green.

Elm is a deciduous tree, up to 25 m high, 1 m diameter at breast height, in the dry barren land grows into a shrubby; young trees with smooth bark, gray-brown or light gray, the bark of large trees dark gray, irregular deep longitudinal fissures, rough; branchlets glabrous or hairy, yellowish gray, light brownish gray or gray, sparse tawny yellow or yellow, with scattered lenticels, no expanded corky layer and raised corky wings. Winter buds subglobose or ovoid, bud scales abaxially glabrous, margins of inner bud scales white villous.

Leaves elliptic-ovate, long-ovate, elliptic-lanceolate, or ovate-lanceolate, 2-8 cm long, 1.2-3.5 cm wide, apex acuminate or long acuminate, base oblique or nearly symmetrical, cuneate to rounded on one side, rounded to semi-cardiac on the other, leaf surface smooth and glabrous, abaxial surface of the leaf pubescent when young, then glabrous or with clusters of hairs in some of the axils of the veins, margins doubly serrate or singly serrate, lateral veins 9-16 per side. Lateral veins 9-16 per side, petiole 4-10 mm long, usually pubescent only above.

Flowers open before the leaves, in clusters in the leaf axils of previous annual branches. The samaras are suborbicular, sparsely obovate-orbicular, 1.2-2 cm long, glabrous except for the apical notch on the stigmatic surface.

Elm

The kernel is located in the middle of the samara, the upper end is not close to or close to the notch, the color is the same as the fruit wings before and after maturity, the first light green, then white-yellow, the persistent perianth is glabrous, 4-lobed, the margins of the lobes hairy, the fruiting pedicel is shorter than the perianth, 1-2 mm long, (or sparsely absent) pubescent. Fruiting period March-June (later in NE).