Goldleaf Farms

Featured Tree

The Musashino Zelkova (Zelkova serrata ‘Musashino’) is a narrow, upright, vase-shaped deciduous tree, typically reaching 12 to 14 m in height with a spread of only 3 to 4.5 m. The bark is smooth and gray when young, and it peels with age to reveal orange-brown patches beneath. The leaves are simple and alternate, ovate to oblong-ovate, roughly 2.5 to 7.5 cm long on short petioles of 2 to 5 mm. They are sharply serrated with pointed tips, dark green and slightly rough above and paler below, turning yellow to orange or red in autumn. The tree is monoecious, with separate male and female flowers borne on the same tree in spring as the leaves emerge. They are small and yellow-green, the male about 3 mm across in the axils of the lower leaves and the female smaller and solitary in the upper axils, and they are pollinated by wind. The fruit is a small, wingless drupe of about 2 to 4 mm, ripening from green to brown in late summer to autumn.