Celtis julianae Seeds | Julian’s Hackberry
LATIN NAME: Celtis julianae
COMMON NAME: Julian’s Hackberry
Plant Profile
Turn a leaf over and the structure is unmistakable: three veins of nearly equal weight spring from the base of the blade, the middle one continuing as the midrib while the two side veins sweep out toward the margin. The base of the leaf is uneven, one side of the blade sitting lower than the other, and the upper two thirds are saw-toothed. Leaf size is the easy separation from its Chinese relatives, and it is one of the larger-leaved hackberries in cultivation.
The fruit is a drupe with a single stone inside, and the stone is hard enough to survive a gut. In late autumn and winter the crop is taken by thrushes, waxwings and starlings, which pass the stones out intact and move the tree about the countryside. The fruit hangs on the tree after leaf fall, which is both the reason it is such a good bird tree and the reason the ground beneath it is littered with stones every spring.
The authority attached to the name is Camillo Schneider, the German dendrologist who worked through the Chinese material sent back to Europe by the plant hunters of the early twentieth century. The species name honours a person rather than a place, which is why there is no Julian’s Hill or Mount Julian on any map. The published account of the tree belongs to that period when European herbaria were sorting a flood of new Chinese woody plants into species.
Unlike the American hackberries, whose trunks are notoriously warty with corky ridges, this species keeps a smooth grey bark into middle age, marked only by faint horizontal lines. On old trees the base becomes slightly fluted and the colour darkens. The clean finish makes it a better street tree than its warty relatives.
The tree tolerates drought, poor soil, compacted ground, salt and atmospheric pollution, and it transplants well, all of which explains its steady rise as an urban species across warm and temperate China. It is also one of the few trees that will consent to grow in a strip between a road and a wall. In a garden it wants sun and an open root run, and it will reward you with fast growth and a broad dome of foliage within a few seasons.
Science & Biotechnology
Anyone looking up the family of a hackberry in an old book will find Ulmaceae, and the elm association explains the leaf shape. Modern molecular work has placed Celtis in Cannabaceae, the hemp family, with the hops and the nettle trees, an arrangement driven by genetic evidence rather than by appearance.
Because the flowers are wind-pollinated and the tree is planted widely in Chinese cities, hackberry pollen turns up regularly in aerobiological surveys and allergen clinics in the region. There has been real research on the allergens in this genus, and the results matter to city planting programmes: a species that is drought-proof and pollution-proof can still be a public health cost. If someone in the household reacts to pollen, site a specimen away from the bedroom windows.
Uses & Benefits
The tree itself grows as a spreading tree of fifteen to twenty metres, with a dense crown that starts fairly low and rounds off with age. The leaves are held on slender stalks and move in wind, so the canopy shimmers when the light is behind it. Small greenish flowers appear with the new leaves in spring, wind-pollinated and easily missed because they carry neither petals nor perfume.
Growing from Seed
Most street trees give you shade and nothing else. A hackberry gives you shade and a late-season fruit that is genuinely sweet, a thin sugary flesh over a hard stone, tasting somewhere between a date and a dried fig. In parts of its range the drupes are gathered from wild trees in autumn once the frost has cut the astringency. Eat them a few at a time, spit out the stone, and do not expect to gather more than a handful.
Clean the stones free of flesh as soon as you collect them, or the pulp will mould in store. Sow them in a mix of loam and grit in a deep pan, cover them to roughly twice their own depth, and put the pan outdoors in a cold frame for the winter, where wet and cold can soften the stone casing. Mice and voles will take them if given the chance, so cover the pan. Expect seedlings to appear in a flush in spring rather than evenly.
Because the species seeds freely where a parent tree is established, seedlings often appear in gravel, guttering and paving cracks. Lift these while small and line them out in a nursery bed at thirty to forty centimetres apart, then lift and replant them once they have made a full season so the taproot is shortened and the young tree builds a fibrous root system. Keep the stems clear of side shoots to about head height if you want a clean trunk.
Our Take
I keep a hackberry in the garden mainly for the birds, and the fruit is a nice bonus when it ripens before the frost takes it. If you want the genus on a smaller scale, compare it with Celtis sinensis, which is the more common street tree in China and a lighter plant, or with the American hackberry, whose warty bark makes the smooth trunk of this species look almost ornamental, and the smaller Celtis bungeana suits a tighter space. Either way, plant it where the winter fruit has room to fall and the birds are welcome.
Related Reading
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