Elm, deciduous tree, up to 25 meters high. Trunk erect, branches more spreading, crown nearly spherical or ovoid. Bark dark gray, rough, irregularly longitudinal. Leaves alternate, ovate-elliptic to elliptic-lanceolate, margin multiple serrate. Flowers bisexual, leaf-first or coetaneous in early spring, purple-brown, in clusters of cymes. Samaras suborbicular, apically notched. Flowering in March to April, fruit ripening in April to May.

Elm is a deciduous tree, up to 25 m high, 1 m diameter at breast height, in the dry barren land grows into a shrub; young trees bark smooth, gray-brown or light gray, the bark of large trees

dark gray, irregular deep longitudinal fissure, rough; branchlets glabrous or hairy, light yellowish gray, light brownish gray, or gray, sparse tawny yellow or yellow, there are scattered lenticels, no dilated corky layer and the corky wings of the bulge; 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 subsymmetric, cuneate to rounded on one side, rounded to semicardiac on the other, leaf surface smooth and glabrous, abaxial surface of the leaf pubescent when young, then becoming glabrous or partly with clusters of hairs in the axils of the veins, margins doubly serrate or singly serrate, lateral veins 9-16 per side, petiole Petiole 4-10 mm long, usually pubescent only above. Flowers open before leaves, in clusters in leaf axils of preceding annual branches. Samara suborbicular, sparsely obovate-orbicular, 1.2-2 cm, glabrous except for apical notch on stigmatic side, pyrenes partially located in middle of samara, distal end not close to or close to notch, color same as wing before and after maturity, first light green, later whitish yellow, persistent perianth glabrous, 4-lobed, lobe margins hairy, fruiting pedicels shorter than perianth, 1-2 mm, puberulent (or sparsely absent). Fruiting period March-June (later in NE).