ULMACE^. 8ILVA OF NORTH AMUEICA. 



45 



The White Elm is one of the largest and most graceful trees of the northeastern states and 

 Canada. It is beautiful at all seasons of the year; when its minute flowers, harbingers of earliest 

 spring, cover the branches ; when in summer it rises like a great fountain of dark and brilliant 

 green above its humbler companions of the forest, or sweeps with long and graceful boughs the placid 

 waters of some stream flowing through verdant meadows ; when autumn delicately tints its leaves, and 

 when winter brings out every detail of the great arching limbs and slender pendulous branches standing 

 out in clear relief against the sky. 



The Elm-trees which greeted the English colonists as they landed on the shores of New England 

 seemed like old friends from their general resemblance to the Elm-trees that had stood by their 

 cottages at home ; and as the forest gave way to corn-fields many Elm-trees were allowed to escape the 

 axe, and when a home was made a sapling Elm taken from the borders of a neighboring swamp was 

 often set to guard the roof-tree. These Elm-trees, remnants of the forests which covered New England 

 when it was first inhabited by white men, or planted during the first century of their occupation, are 

 now dead or rapidly disappearing; they long remained the noblest and most imposing trees of the 

 northern states, and no others planted by man in North America have equaled the largest of them in 

 beauty and size.^ 



The White Elm^ has always been the favorite ornamental tree in the northern states, where it has 

 been used more often than any other to shade city streets and country roadsides, to decorate parks, and 

 to embower mansions and cottages in verdure. In such situations it does not always flourish, and 

 unless provided with good soil and abundant moisture, which are essential to its welfare, and with 

 careful and constant protection from the insects which devour its foliage, the White Elm is not a 

 handsome or successful tree ; and it should be cautiously used in street planting. 



Ulmus Americana was first described by Clayton in the Flora Virginlca^ and was cultivated in 

 England by Mr. James Gordon^ as early as the middle of the eighteenth century;^ it is still occasion- 

 ally seen in European collections, although beyond the boundaries of its native land it does not grow to 

 a great size or display much beauty. An unusually variable tree in habit and in the size and shape of 

 its leaves, Ulmits Americana has not produced in cultivation such abnormal forms as have been derived 

 from some of the Old World species. The most remarkable is one with long and unusually pendulous 

 branches which was discovered a few years ago in the woods of Illinois, and is now propagated by 



nurserymen.*^ 



of Massachusetts 



Warren, The ^ Ulmus procerior foliis angustioribus , trunco per intervalla vimini- 



146 



Great Tree on Boston Common, — Piper, The Trees of America^ lus dense congestis infra ramos ohsito^ 



40, _ Buckley, Am. Jour. ScL ser. 2, xiii. 398. — Oliver VTendell Ulmus Americana, Golden, ^c^ Hort. Ups. 1743, 99 {PL Nove- 



tocrat of the BreaJcfast-TablCj ch^ip. x. — Dame & bor.). 



Elms and other Trees of Massachusetts. — Garden * See i. 40. 



443.467 



5 Aiton, Hart. Kew. i. 320. 



1406 



2 Ulmus Americana is also known as the American Elm and 1246. 

 Swamp Elm, and sometimes as the Rock Elm, although this name ^ C 



is most often applied to Ulmus racemosa. 



and 



