Celtis sinensis Chinese hackberry

Celtis sinensis line Museum Way, from Bing Concert Hall, pictured, to Cantor Arts Center. Sairus Patel, 29 Oct 2018

Comparison of upper and lower leaf surfaces of (left to right) Celtis sinensis (teeth, when present, don’t extend to leaf stalk), C. australis (leaf undersides fuzzy), C. occidentalis (leaf widest in basal half). All leaves from campus specimens. Sairus Patel, 17 Sep 2019

Not as large a tree as C. occidentalis and with somewhat smaller leaves. The light gray bark on the trunk is smooth or finely rough and has distinctive level scars every 3 inches. Many of the trunks have furrows that widen toward the base.

Chinese hackberries line Museum Way from Lomita Drive to Lasuen Street. A couple of dozen encircle the green at Gerhard Caspar Quad and extend to the adjacent entrances of Castaño and Lantana Halls. A row of six are nearby, behind the northernmost wing of Kimball Hall.

Eleven on Via Pueblo in step with the columns on the Center for Integrated Systems were replaced with Chinese pistaches. Three dozen used to be seen at the Arrillaga Family Sports Center, on the sides facing Taube Tennis Center and Avery Aquatic Center.

Chinese hackberries have been infected with the imported Asian woolly hackberry aphid since the early 2000s. Stanford’s Grounds staff used to band the trees with a sticky product that kept out of the canopies the ants that would protect the aphids from predators such as ladybird beetles.