Celtis australis seeds

Celtis australis, the European nettle tree, is a majestic shade tree emblematic of Mediterranean landscapes. With its broad, rounded crown, its dense foliage and its grey, beech-like bark, it is a characterful tree for a large garden or an urban park. Untroubled by diseases, highly drought-tolerant, and cold-hardy, tolerant of poor soils and pollution, it is an excellent substitute for the plane tree. It is offered here as seeds to give the patient gardener the opportunity to raise excellent avenue trees.

Celtis australis belongs to the Cannabaceae family. It is known as the European nettle tree, the southern nettle tree, Mediterranean hackberry or simply the nettle tree. The species has several botanical synonyms, including Celtis excelsa, Celtis betulifolia, Celtis kotschyana and Celtis lutea. It is a deciduous tree, native to a wide belt around the Mediterranean: southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, southern France, Italy, the Balkans, Greece), the Mediterranean islands, North Africa and western Asia as far as Turkey, the Near East, Transcaucasia and northern Iran. In the wild, it favours warm valleys and open woodlands on deep, calcareous or loamy soils. Its hardiness is rated at -15/-18°C once established.
A tree of 15 to 20m in height (sometimes more under ideal conditions), Celtis australis develops a slender, regular trunk which, with age, develops root buttresses at its base. The light grey, smooth and finely wrinkled bark may become mottled with small, lighter patches over time. The branching forms a rounded or dome-shaped crown, fairly broad, with slender, more or less pendulous twigs. The deciduous, oval-lanceolate, 5 to 15cm long leaves have a slightly asymmetrical base, a toothed margin and a pointed tip. Rough to the touch and dull dark green on the upper surface, they are paler and slightly hairy on the underside. They take on a beautiful yellow hue in autumn before falling. The April-May flowering is insignificant: the small greenish flowers, without obvious petals, hermaphrodite or male, are pollinated by the wind. In late summer and autumn they are followed by small round drupes about 1cm in diameter, at first green, then reddish-brown to black. These edible hackberries are sweet but with little flesh and loved by birds.
The deep and powerful root system accounts for its good drought resistance, but it needs sufficiently deep soil and should be kept away from light structures.

Growing from seed has the advantage of moderate cost and plants well adapted to their soil, at the price of some patience: allow about 3 to 4 years to obtain a young tree of 2 to 3m, then a fine shade tree of 6 to 8m in about ten years, with natural variability between individuals.

Intimately linked to the history of the villages of southern France, the nettle tree was long cultivated for its strong and flexible wood, used for tool handles, forks, whips, walking sticks, cart wheels or coachbuilding parts. Its fruits were sometimes used to make small local liqueurs. The shade of large specimens, often planted on squares or near churches, was ideal for the summer siesta.

The European nettle tree is best reserved for large spaces: as a specimen in the middle of a dry lawn, to mark the entrance to a property or in a line along a wide driveway. Its shade will shelter a garrigue woodland: low shrubs, drought-tolerant perennials, grasses for dry soil. It can be paired with evergreen Mediterranean shrubs such as the mastic tree Pistacia lentiscus, the holm oak Quercus ilex or the narrow-leaved mock privet Phillyrea angustifolia ‘Rosmarinifolia’.