Elm | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Scientific classification | ||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
Species | ||||||||||||
Ulmus alata - winged elm Ulmus americana - American elm Ulmus crassifolia - cedar elm Ulmus glabra - Scotch elm, Wych elm Ulmus parvifolia - Chinese elm Ulmus procera - English elm Ulmus pumila - Siberian elm Ulmus rubra - slippery elm (red elm) Ulmus thomasii - rock elm |
Species of elm are:
Table of contents |
2 Dutch Elm Disease 3 Resistant Trees |
From the Civil War period to the early 20th century, the American Elm was the most widely planted ornamental tree in the United States and Canada. It was particularly popular for boulevard plantings in towns and cities, creating high tunneled effects that formerly characterized old towns in the U.S. Northeast. The American Elm has unique properties that made it ideal for such use:
Landscape Use
From ca 1850 to 1920 the most prized small specimen elm was the Camperdown Elm, a contorted weeping mutation of the Wych Elm, grafted on a standard Wych elm trunk to give a wide, spreading and weeping fountain shape in large garden spaces.
Dutch elm disease has been devastating to elms throughout the Northern Hemisphere. This is a fungal disease that is borne by a vector, the elm-bark beetle. It affects all species of elm native to North America and Europe to some degree. Woodland trees in North America are not quite as susceptible to the disease because they usually lack the root-grafting of the urban elms and are somewhat more isolated from each other.
The disease was first introduced to North America in 1928 and has since become endemic.Dutch Elm Disease