Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, in her 1903 book of short stories,
Six Trees, wrote of the American elm: On 21 March 1941 the American elm was made the
state tree of Massachusetts. The designation was in commemoration of the fact that George Washington reputedly took command of the Continental Army under an elm.
Notable trees A number of mostly small to medium-sized American elms now survive in woodlands, suburban areas, and occasionally cities, where the survivors have often been relatively isolated from other elms and thus spared a severe exposure to the fungus. For example, in Central Park and
Tompkins Square Park in
New York City, stands of several large elms originally planted by
Frederick Law Olmsted survive because of their isolation from neighboring areas in New York where there had been heavy mortality. The Olmsted-designed park system in
Buffalo, New York, did not fare as well. A row of mature American elms lines Central Park along the entire length of Fifth Avenue from 59th to 110th Streets. In
Akron, Ohio, there is a very old elm tree that has not been infected. In historical areas of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, there are also a few mature American elms still standing — notably in
Independence Square and the Quadrangle at the
University of Pennsylvania, and also at the nearby campuses of
Haverford College,
Swarthmore College, and
Pennsylvania State University, believed to be the largest remaining stand in the country. There are several large American Elm trees in western Massachusetts. A large specimen, which stands on Summer Street in the
Berkshire County town of
Lanesborough, Massachusetts, has been kept alive by antifungal treatments.
Rutgers University has preserved 55 mature elms on and in the vicinity of
Voorhees Mall on the College Avenue Campus in
New Brunswick, New Jersey in addition to seven disease-resistant trees that have been planted in this area of the campus in recent years. The largest surviving urban forest of American elms in North America is believed to be in the city of
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where close to 200,000 elms remain. The city of Winnipeg spends $3 million annually to aggressively combat the disease utilizing
Dursban Turf and the
Dutch Trig vaccine, losing 1,500–4,000 trees per year. Governmental agencies, educational institutions or other organizations in most of the states that are within the United States maintain lists of champion or big trees that describe the locations and characteristics of those states' largest American elm trees (see
List of state champion American elm trees). The current U.S. national champion American elm tree is located in
Iberville Parish, Louisiana. When measured in 2010, the tree had a trunk circumference of , a height of and an average crown spread of . The current
Tree Register of the British Isles (TROBI) champion grows in
Avondale Forest near
Rathdrum,
County Wicklow, Ireland. The tree had a height of and a dbh of (circumference of ) when measured in 2000. The tree replaced on the register a larger champion located in Woodvale Cemetery in
Sussex, England, which in 1988 had a height of and a diameter of or circumference of . A prime example of the species was the Sauble Elm, which grew beside the banks of the
Sauble River in
Ontario, Canada, to a height of 43 m (140 ft), with a dbh of before succumbing to DED; when it was felled in 1968, a tree-ring count established that it had germinated in 1701. Other large or otherwise significant American elm trees have included:
Treaty Elm The Treaty Elm,
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. In what is now
Penn Treaty Park, the founder of
Pennsylvania,
William Penn, is said to have entered into a treaty of peace in 1683 with the
native Lenape Turtle Clan under a picturesque elm tree immortalized in a painting by
Benjamin West. West made the tree, already a local landmark, famous by incorporating it into his painting after hearing legends (of unknown veracity) about the tree being the location of the treaty. No documentary evidence exists of any treaty Penn signed beneath a particular tree. On March 6, 1810 a great storm blew the tree down. Measurements taken at the time showed it to have a circumference of , and its age was estimated to be 280 years. Wood from the tree was made into furniture, canes, walking sticks and various trinkets that Philadelphians kept as relics.
Washington Elm (Massachusetts) The
Washington Elm,
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
George Washington is said to have taken command of the American
Continental Army under the Washington Elm in Cambridge on July 3, 1775. The tree survived until the 1920s and "was thought to be a survivor of the primeval forest". In 1872, a large branch fell from it and was used to construct a pulpit for a nearby church. The tree, an American white elm, became a celebrated attraction, with its own plaque, a fence constructed around it and a road moved in order to help preserve it. The tree was cut down (or fell—sources differ) in October 1920 after an expert determined it was dead. The city of Cambridge had plans for it to be "carefully cut up and a piece sent to each state of the country and to the District of Columbia and Alaska," according to
The Harvard Crimson. As late as the early 1930s, garden shops advertised that they had cuttings of the tree for sale, although the accuracy of the claims has been doubted. A Harvard "professor of plant anatomy" examined the tree rings days after the tree was felled and pronounced it between 204 and 210 years old, making it at most 62 years old when Washington took command of the troops at Cambridge. The tree would have been a little more than two feet in diameter (at 30 inches above ground) in 1773. In 1896, an alumnus of the
University of Washington, obtained a rooted cutting of the Cambridge tree and sent it to Professor Edmund Meany at the university. The cutting was planted, cuttings were then taken from it, including one planted on February 18, 1932, the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Washington, for whom Washington state is named. That tree remains on the campus of the Washington State Capitol. Just to the west of the tree is a small elm from a cutting made in 1979. Weakened by DED, the tree died in 1964 from storm damage.
"Herbie" Another notable American elm, named
Herbie, was the tallest American elm in New England until it was cut down on January 19, 2010, after it succumbed to DED. Herbie was tall at its peak and had a circumference of , or a diameter of approximately . The tree stood in
Yarmouth, Maine, where it was cared for by the town's tree warden, Frank Knight. When cut down, Herbie was 217 years old. Herbie's wood is of interest to
dendroclimatologists, who will use cross-sections of the trunk to help answer questions about climate during the tree's lifetime.
Survivor Tree (2004) An American elm located in a parking lot directly across the street from the
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City survived the
Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, that killed 168 people and destroyed the Murrah building. Damaged in the blast, with fragments lodged in its trunk and branches, it was nearly cut down in efforts to recover evidence. However, nearly a year later the tree began to bloom. Then known as the Survivor Tree, it became an important part of the
Oklahoma City National Memorial, and is featured prominently on the official logo of the memorial.
Parliament Hill Elm The
Parliament Hill Elm was planted in
Ottawa, Canada, in the late 1910s or early 1920s when
Centre Block was rebuilt following the Great fire of 1916. The tree grew for approximately a century next to a statue of
John A. Macdonald and was one of the few in the region to survive the spread of DED in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite protests from Ottawa area environmentalists and resistance from Opposition
Members of Parliament the tree was removed in April 2019 to make way for new Centre Block renovations.
Landscaped parks Central Park (2013)
New York City's
Central Park is home to approximately 1,200 American elms. The oldest of these elms were planted during the 1860s by
Frederick Law Olmsted, making them among the oldest stands of American elms in the world. The trees are particularly noteworthy along the Mall and Literary Walk, where four lines of American elms stretch over the walkway forming a cathedral-like covering. A part of New York City's
urban ecology, the elms improve air and water quality, reduce erosion and flooding, and decrease air temperatures during warm days. While the stand is still vulnerable to DED, in the 1980s the
Central Park Conservancy undertook aggressive countermeasures such as heavy pruning and removal of extensively diseased trees. These efforts have largely been successful in saving the majority of the trees, although several are still lost each year. Younger American elms that have been planted in Central Park since the outbreak are of the DED-resistant 'Princeton' and 'Valley Forge' cultivars.
National Mall on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (November 11, 2006). Several rows of American elm trees that the National Park Service first planted during the 1930s line much of the 1.9 miles (3.0 km) length of the
National Mall in
Washington, D.C. DED first appeared on the trees during the 1950s and reached a peak in the 1970s. The NPS used a number of methods to control the
epidemic, including
sanitation,
pruning, injecting trees with
fungicide and replanting with DED-resistant cultivars. The NPS combated the disease's local insect
vector, the smaller European elm bark beetle (
Scolytus multistriatus), by trapping and by spraying with
insecticides. As a result, the population of American elms planted on the Mall and its surrounding areas has remained intact for more than 80 years.
Accessions ;North America •
Arnold Arboretum, US. Acc. nos. 250-53 (cult. material), 412-86 wild collected in the United States. •
Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest,
Clermont,
Kentucky. No details available. •
Denver Botanic Gardens, US. One specimen, no details. •
Holden Arboretum, US. Acc. nos. 2005-17, 65-632, 80-663, all of unrecorded provenance. •
Longwood Gardens, US. Acc. nos. 1997-0074, L-0352, sources unrecorded. •
Missouri Botanical Garden, US. Acc. nos. 1969-6172, 1986-0206, 1986-0207, 1986-0208. •
New York Botanical Garden, US. Acc. nos. 877/97, 944/96, 1854/99, 2111/99, 06791, all unrecorded provenance. •
Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens, US. Acc. nos. 00/1265, 99/0660. •
Scott Arboretum, US. Acc. no. S000339, no other details available. •
U S National Arboretum,
Washington, D.C., US. Acc. nos. 64254, 64255, 64256, 66355, 66426, 68988, 69304, 66341. ;Europe •
Brighton & Hove City Council, UK.
NCCPG elm collection. •
Dubrava Arboretum, Lithuania. No accession details available. •
Grange Farm Arboretum,
Sutton St James,
Spalding,
Lincolnshire, UK. Acc. no. not known. • Hortus Botanicus Nationalis,
Salaspils, Latvia. Acc. nos. 18087,88,89,90,91,92. •
Linnaean Gardens of Uppsala, Sweden. Acc. nos. 1976-2713,0000-2170 •
Strona Arboretum, University of Life Sciences,
Warsaw, Poland. No accession details available. •
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, UK. Acc. no. 19901741, Ulmus americana L., wild collected in Canada; Acc. no. 19802124, Ulmus americana L.× pumila L. var. arborea, cultivated material •
Tallinn Botanic Garden, Estonia. No accession details available. •
Thenford House arboretum, Northamptonshire, UK. No accession details available. •
University of Copenhagen, Botanic Garden, Denmark. Acc. no. P1971-5201, wild collected in the US •
Wakehurst Place Garden,
Wakehurst Place, UK. Acc. nos. 1994-67, 1994-68, 1991-1163.A. ;Australasia •
Eastwoodhill Arboretum,
Gisborne, New Zealand. 11 trees, accession details not known.
Art and photography The nobility and arching grace of the American Elm in its heyday, on farms, in villages, in towns and on campuses, were celebrated in the books of photographs of
Wallace Nutting (
Massachusetts Beautiful, N.Y. 1923, and other volumes in the series) and of
Samuel Chamberlain (
The New England Image, New York, 1962).
Frederick Childe Hassam is notable among painters who have depicted American Elm. File:Scribner's magazine (1887) (14778695871).jpg|Scribner's magazine [1887] File:Hassam Washington Arch Spring.jpg|Frederick Childe Hassam, 'Washington Arch, Spring' [1893] File:Church at Old Lyme Childe Hassam.jpeg|Frederick Childe Hassam, 'Church at Old Lyme' [1905] File:Childe Hassam's 1920 oil, The East Hampton Elms in May.jpg|Frederick Childe Hassam, 'The East Hampton Elms in May' [1920] File:GeorgeInnessOldElmAtMedfield.jpg|
George Inness, 'Old Elm at Medfield' File:Descriptive catalogue of ornamental trees, shrubs, vines, evergreens, hardy plants and fruits (1901) (20374142888).jpg|American elm avenue,
New Haven, Connecticut (1901), Thomas Meehan and Sons catalogue File:Historic American Buildings Survey (Fed.) Stanley P. Mixon, Photographer May 15, 1940 (A) VIEW FROM SOUTH EAST, ELM 12 Ft DIAMETER, 36 Ft CIRCUMFERENCE, 165 Ft SPREAD 100 Ft HIGH. HABS MASS,9-FRAM,4-1.tif|
U. americana with 165 ft spread,
Framingham (1940), by Stanley P. Mixon == Gallery ==