Return of the Elms...maybe.

[Stew]

I don't know if any of you saw the Guardian last Thursday but there was an interesting article about Elms.

Thankfully, it's on their website as well.

Return of the Elms

The Ramblers Association walks are this weekend so too late for that but an interesting read none the less.

 

[Tantalus]

love elm trees too

first i remember about dutch elm was the tree that i had a tractor tyre on from a rope as a kid started to die back at the crown

during the next few years all the trees in the avenue died and were cut down

the view still looks as though it is missing something when i go back to my folks

a few of the smaller elms on the farm did not seem to be so badly affected

some seem to regrow back to 6 or 10 feet and succumb to the disease once they reach a certain size

others continue undaunted . though they are a long way from the magnificent ones that were cut down 20 years or more ago

perhaps there is hope that our elms may recover, i would dearly like to see that happen

Tant

 

[TheViking]

Are there few elmtrees in Britain?? I have a few... :biggthump It's quite good for whittling, IMO.

 

[Tantalus]

a magnificent species that once covered Britain in its tens of millions; a species that can now only boast a few thousand in number, remnants of a population ravaged by disease some four decades ago.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1305083,00.html

 

[Quill]

I too miss the elm lined streets of my youth. Their canopies across the streets were awsome. The world has changed a lot though. I doubt they will ever regrow them in this fashion in the USA. Power lines line the streets now. They will not tolerate the trees any more. The old ones were planted pre-electric days.

 

[Realgar]

Elms apparently go through a boom and bust cycle with elm disease - it'sbeen around longer than the newspaper article suggests. The beetles only go for trees above a certain size which is why you get the hedgerow elm thing of sprouting from the the base and then dying back a few years later.

I think some of the replanting is ill advised - they're making the same mistake as was made with the trees in the first place - planting everything from a small number of clones, they might be disease resistant at the moment but it won;'t take much change from the whole homogenous population to get wiped out again.

They'll be back - it's just that many won't be of a decent size in our lifetime though I can point you to a local spot that does still have healthy elms that are nice if not the mindblowing things that used to dominate the horizon in some parts,


Realgar

 

[match]

A comment was made to me by a guy who taught a wood sculpting class I did at the end of last year - he said that in 10-20 years time it would be nigh on impossible to obtain elmwood for carving/furniture etc, since there was a glut at the moment (from felled diseased trees) and there is a ban on felling healthy trees.

So if you've got any elmwood lying around, hang on to it - it might be a good investment!

 

[Aelfred]

Elms are fantastic trees. I had only seen the corked bark of the scrubby youngsters growing from hedgerows until I moved to Brighton and I was blown away by the size and charcter of the elm trees here. Because the city is in a kind of bowl between the South Downs and the sea it has been protected from the beetle carrying Dutch Elm Disease, which can't fly over the Downs and has yet to find a way around.

There are some stunning elms here. From young saplings to ancient Grandfather trees, massive and cracked with age. I suspect some are of the mindblowing size Realgar remembers. Sadly some have come down in the high winds recently and I discovered that the heartwood smelt oddly like rabbit!?

 

[spiritofold]

There are some big Witch elms near where i live and i found a patch of English elms in some coppice near Stonehenge,it makes excellent self bows with real killer poundage.

Andy

 

[hootchi]

Im afraid im too youngs to remember the disease but iv heard of it and it is a shame to hear about it now. Its good to see something positive done about it now though.

 

[Pappa]

I see Elms all over the place, but as has been said, only small ones. There is aparently some compelling evidence that Dutch Elm Disease wiped out Elms here in prehistoric times. I can't remember the exact timeframe, but some time between the end of the last ice age and the beginning of the neolithic. Elm pollen droped dramatically, and a pupa case of the Elm Bark Beetle has been found in a related archaeological context.

While the most recent outbreak was caused by human intervention, I presonally don't see the point in planting loads of Elms; it's not like they're actually dying out. Their population is likely to recover on its own, eventually.

Pappa

 

[Don Redondo]

Elms apparently go through a boom and bust cycle with elm disease - it'sbeen around longer than the newspaper article suggests. The beetles only go for trees above a certain size which is why you get the hedgerow elm thing of sprouting from the the base and then dying back a few years later.

I think some of the replanting is ill advised - they're making the same mistake as was made with the trees in the first place - planting everything from a small number of clones, they might be disease resistant at the moment but it won;'t take much change from the whole homogenous population to get wiped out again.

They'll be back - it's just that many won't be of a decent size in our lifetime though I can point you to a local spot that does still have healthy elms that are nice if not the mindblowing things that used to dominate the horizon in some parts,


Realgar

the sad fact is that most of the English elm population is more or less identical. EE hardly ever produces viable seeds, it mostly propagates through root layering and suckering, and spread mainly through planting by landowners from the middle ages onward, which is why it was hit so hard.

wych elm will produce viable seed and has hung on in the higher rainfall in the west in isolated pockets, but the DED is still about.

When I was DED officer in E Sussex 20 years back we did a census of elm repopulation and came up with a figure which suggested that there was between 2 and 3 times more elm in the county than there was some 20 years prior , before DED. The main problem is that elms are now small hedgerow trees, having more in common with hazel and the like rather than with oak.

I have around a ton of planked elm in my garage, waiting to be made into furniture.