Nature Trees & Leaves Photo Guide Simple Toothed Leaves


 Simple Toothed Leaves

Single leaves with saw teeth around the edges.

Black Cherry
Red Mulberry
Slippery Elm

 Black Cherry


Rose family. Prunus serotina
Common name: Wild Cherry
Black Cherry grows to 80 feet.

Black Cherry leaves can be 2-5 inches long. This one is about 2.5 inches. The leaves have blunt saw teeth.

They have clusters of 3/8" white flowers in late April.  Tent caterpillars like to eat the young leaves. 

The flowers turn into small cherries that turn black.

 Red Mulberry


Mulberry family. Morus rubra
The Red Mulberry can grow to 60 feet.

Red Mulberrry leaves are simple, heart-shaped, up to 7" long and 5" wide, and saw-toothed.

Around here its sweet berries ripen around the first of June.

Slippery Elm

Elm family. Ulmus rubra
Common names: Soft Elm, Red Elm
 

Slippery Elm has simple leaves 4-7" long. You can tell them because they are lop-sided, shorter on one side than the other. 

They are double-toothed. The larger teeth along the edges have smaller teeth on them.

 Slippery Elm seeds hang in groups from long slender stalks.

Notice how the leaves seem to march in two files down each side of the twig.

Slippery elm trees can reach 70'.

 
 

Sources: National Audubon Society Field Guide to Trees, Eastern Region,by Elbert L. Little, 2000, Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Flora of Missouri,by Julian A.Steyermark, Iowa State University Press, Ames, Iowa, 1981. Photos and text by Peter Callaway.

This is the Web site of the Bryant Watershed Education Project, based in West Plains, Missouri. Our site is a toolkit for exploring the Bryant Creek, North Fork, Eleven Point and Upper Spring watersheds in the southern Missouri Ozarks.
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