Rural School Leaflet 12 15 



THE ELM 



John Bentley, Jr. 



Of the many trees that are common in New York State, the elm is 

 doubtless the most familiar to boys and girls. The reason for this is plain, 

 when we consider that the elm is a tree of the farms, the home lawns, and 

 the streets of the towns, rather than a tree of the deep woods. While it 

 is found occasionally in the forest, it is almost always scattered among 

 other trees and never forms a large proportion of the forest, as do maples, 

 birches, pines, or oaks. Throughout the New England States, New York, 

 and Pennsylvania, the elm is one of the commonest shade trees, not only 

 for the streets of the towns and villages but also for the grounds about 

 the home. The tree is so graceful and beautiful, and, when old. so stately 

 and dignified, that it well deserves the place which it holds in the esti- 

 mation of the people. 



The elm has a very distinctive form and habit of growth. Other trees 

 seen from a distance are not always easy to recognize: the maple and 

 the beech look somewhat alike, especially when young; the oak and the 

 chestnut, the ash and the hickory, resemble one another slightly. But 

 the elm, with its massive trunk — which quickly breaks up into several 

 large branches, giving the tree an urn-shaped appearance — and the 

 delicacy of the twigs and branchlets, forming a crown with a fringe-like 

 margin, is easy to recognize even at some little distance. To a remark- 

 able degree it combines strength with grace and beauty. 



The elm is a widely distributed tree. It is found in southern New- 

 foundland and through the southern part of Canada as far west as the 

 northern shore of Lake Superior. It grows along the Atlantic coast 

 as far south as Florida, although it never reaches very large size in the 

 southern part of its range. Westward it is found from South Dakota 

 to Texas, although not in such large numbers as in the East. Everywhere 

 it shows a preference for the low, rich lands that border rivers and streams, 

 and it grows to its largest size where the soil is rich, fertile, deep, and 

 moist. Under favorable conditions it will grow to a height of one hun- 

 dred and twenty feet and a diameter of eleven feet. Many very large 

 trees have become famous, as the large elm at Lancaster, Massachusetts, 

 and the two elms on the river bank at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. It 

 is the wide spread of the branches, as well as the massive size of the trunk, 

 which makes the elm impressive; sometimes the crown of a tree measures 

 one hundred and twenty feet across. 



The elm tree, large as it is, springs from a very small seed. The flowers, 

 which are inconspicuous, blossom early, before the leaves are fully grown, 

 fade soon after, and are as quickly followed by the ripening seeds. These 

 small seeds have wings on the margins, with sharp points, and are very 



