The Absence of the Elms

When we arrived here, in the summer of 1968, there were so many huge old dying elms that we jokingly referred to the place as "Dead Elm Farm." One by one every single elm succumbed to the virus. Bare and leafless, they dropped their branches and then stood as barkless pillars until rot or a windstorm toppled them. For many years there were young elms around, but as soon as they grew to twenty or so feet, the disease would take hold. There are still a few adolescent elm skeletons, but they're harder and harder to find. 

We have some slippery elms and an occasional water elm, but the good old American elm, a prominent feature of our landscape for several hundred million years down to this present moment, is virtually extinct. 

Am I a member of the last generation on earth to marvel at the majesty of these great trees?  Sure the landscape is still rich -- maples, oaks, birches both white and yellow, beeches, spruce, pine, fir, hemlock, the big-toothed aspen, a cottonwood or two, cedars and our most plentiful wetlands inhabitant, the deciduous conifer variously called the hackmatack or tamarack or larch (in taxonomists' parlance, the larchy larch, larix laricina).  But I grieve for the elms. Their absence makes a space in my mental landscape. 

I don't, of course, long for the American chestnut, which was gone for fifty years when I came on the stage. Just as my descendants won't notice the absence of the elms.

Not far from the house an old elm has coppiced in an awkward place, and it needs to be removed. It's ugly -- twenty or so stems ten or twelve feet high racing for the sun. It should go. But I imagine that I'll leave the best of the shoots and hope that it will thrive. It would be almost criminal to saw down the last lonely elm. There's always the one-in-a-million chance that this unhandsome specimen will prove to be virus-immune. Wouldn't that be something?   

Comments

[Paul]

This was a wonderful post, good doctor. I grew up outside a prominent Elm City (New Haven.... apparently Keene, NH and others stake a claim to the name), and learned to ride a bike pedalling around the old elm in our backyard. It was not a simple thing, with roots surfacing like crocodiles. I don't know if that elm still lives. I hope it does. I know I can ride a bike with the best of them.

[Sarah]

Hi Dr M

I live in England, which is similarly de-elmed. I'm not old enough to remember the elms but when I read about how they used to dominate the landscape I feel a physical pain in the chest with the loss.

One of the nearest pubs to me is called 'The Elm Shades' and I can't enjoy a drink there as I mourn the loss of shade I never experienced.

However, there is a large virus-immune elm tree in a park near me (a cross between the English Elm and a Dutch variety). There is a healthy population of mature English Elm trees in Brighton, Sussex. I am optimistic that one day the elms will make a recovery. If they can cope with climate change, that is.