Part 38

The name cliff elm which this tree bears in Wisconsin is but another form of the name rock elm, and clearly has reference to the situation where the tree grows in that part of the country. Hickory elm, on the other hand, a name applied to this tree much farther south, is a recognition of the wood’s toughness.

In some particulars it does not fall much below hickory in toughness, but is not as strong, elastic, or capable of as smooth polish. The latter property is one of the recommendations of hickory when used for handles. It is very smooth to the touch; cork elm is less so. In the northern woods, elm ax handles are in use, and some axmen prefer them to hickory. Such is probably the case when the best cork elm and a medium or poor quality of hickory are in competition.

The fibers of cork elm are interlaced, rendering the splitting of the wood difficult. For uses in which that is a desirable property, it is preferable to hickory. It is better for hubs for large wagons, and that is a very important use for this elm.

The wood of all the elms is ring-porous; that is, the springwood, or inner part of the annual ring, consists of one or more rows of large ducts. The summerwood contains pores in large numbers, but they are small, and are usually arranged in short curved lines. The medullary rays are not prominent in the wood of any of the elms, and quarter-sawing adds no beauty to the lumber. The wood is practically without figure, on account of either annual rings or medullary rays; but it may be stained, polished, and made very attractive. That is done oftener with white elm than with any other.

The strength of cork elm created demand for it in boat building at an early day. The tree is and always was scarce in the vicinity of the Atlantic sea board, and the earliest boat builders seem not to have been acquainted with the wood. It was most abundant in the forests of Michigan, though it extended westward to Nebraska. It was plentiful in the province of Ontario, and the timbers from that region acquainted English shipbuilders with the merits of the wood. They sent contractors into Michigan to buy cork elm, long before the other hardwoods of that region had attracted the attention of the outside world. The most convenient supplies of cork elm on the Lower Michigan peninsula thus passed through Canada to ship yards on the other side of the sea. The wood is reputed to be more durable than any of the other elms.

It is generally understood that the country’s supply of cork elm is running short, but there are no statistics which show how much is left or how much has been cut. It is doubtful if the original forests, including the whole country, had one tree of cork elm to twenty of white elm. The average size of cork elm is sixty feet high and two in diameter. The trunks are well shaped, if forest grown. They develop small crowns in proportion to the size of trunks; and the crowns are less graceful than those of white elm--lacking the long, sweeping curves of the latter. The general contour of the tree has been compared to white oak.

Cork elm grows well when planted on the Pacific coast, in environments quite different from its native habitat. In the forest it increases in size slowly; when planted it makes much better headway. It has a disagreeable habit of sprouting which puts it out of favor as a park tree.

The wood of the different elms is largely used for manufacturing purposes. They are sometimes kept separate, but generally not. The particular place where cork elm is preferred is in the manufacture of vehicles and boats, but it is by no means confined to those commodities.

The state of Michigan alone sends 50,000,000 feet of elm a year to its factories to be converted into articles of general utility. Furniture makers take over 2,000,000 feet of it, though elm is not classed as a furniture wood. In certain places it is superior to almost every other wood. No matter how discolored it becomes by weathering and the accumulation of foreign substances, a vigorous application of soap, water, and a scrubbing brush will whiten it. It is liked in certain parts of refrigerators which need constant scrubbing. Elm to the extent of 8,000,000 feet goes into refrigerators in Michigan alone.

The strength and toughness of elm make it suitable for frames of tables. When thus used, it is generally out of sight, but not infrequently it is made into table legs as well as frames. Statistics show that more than a million feet are manufactured yearly into handles in Michigan alone. All three of the northern elms--white, cork, and slippery--are listed in the handle industry.

Many millions of feet of elm are yearly converted into automobile stock--3,000,000 in Michigan. Horse-drawn vehicles take more. The most common place for it is the hub, but it serves also as shafts, poles, reaches, and even as spokes for wagons of the largest size.

The important place in the slack cooperage industry held by elm is well known. It is a flour barrel wood, but is employed for barrels of many other kinds. It stands high as veneer, not the kind of which the visible parts of furniture are made, but the invisible interior, built up of veneer sheets glued together. A similar kind of veneer forms the boxes or frames of trunks--the part to be covered by metal, leather, or cloth. The slats which strengthen the outside of trunks are frequently of elm.

This wood is not in favor for one important purpose, hardwood distillation. It has escaped pretty generally also from being employed as a farm material, on account of its poor lasting qualities. Some slippery elm was mauled into fence rails in the pioneer days of Ohio, Indiana, and southern Michigan, but that was only because it was plentiful and convenient. Cork elm probably never made a fence rail, because it is so unwedgeable that no rail splitter would have anything to do with it. At the best, it is but a temporary makeshift as fence posts, but by applying creosote and other preservative treatments to lessen decay, it measures up with most other post woods.

The elms are not indispensable woods in this country, but their exhaustion, should it ever come, will leave many places hard to fill. As far as known, no woodlots of any species of elm have been planted in this country, and there is little prospect that any will be planted, because the slow growth of the trees discourages foresters. A century or two is a long look ahead.

However, the exhaustion of no species of the elms in this country need be expected soon. The most apparent peril lies ahead of cork elm, because it never was abundant, and demand, which has been large for a long time, is still strong. The species is scattered over more than 200,000 square miles, and a long time must elapse before the last cork elm finds its way to the sawmill. The situation of white elm is more promising. It may be among the last trees of the American forests to take its final departure. Its wide range and its bounteous seed crops insure a supply, though not necessarily a large one, for a long time. The greatest peril to elms, as well as to many other forest trees, is that, when weakened by depletion, some disease will attack them and destroy the remnants. Experience in New England and elsewhere has shown that elm has no great resisting power when a strong attack is made upon it.

SLIPPERY ELM

SLIPPERY ELM

(Ulmus Pubescens)

This tree is known as slippery elm in every state where it grows, thirty or more; but in some localities it has other names also. It is doubtful if any person who is acquainted with the tree would fail to recognize it by the name slippery elm, though some who are acquainted with the lumber only might not know it by that name. Those who call it red elm have in mind the color of the heartwood which is of deeper red than the wood of any other elm, or they may refer to the tawny pubescence on the young shoots in winter. The botanical name describes that characteristic.

In the North, the slippery elm is sometimes known as moose elm. It furnishes forage in winter for the moose and other herbivorous animals when ground plants are covered with snow. The moose is able to eat branches as thick as a man’s thumb. The principal food element in the twigs is the mucilaginous inner bark. It is this which gives the tree its name slippery elm. The value of the bark as a food has been questioned. It is agreeable to the taste of both man and beast, but it is claimed that a human being will starve to death on it, though it will prolong life several days. The lower animals, however, seem able to derive more benefit from eating the bark. An incident of the War of 1812 appears to prove this. The army under General Harrison, operating in the vicinity of Lake Erie, kept the horses of the expedition alive by feeding them on slippery elm bark, stripped from the trees and chopped in small bits.

The inner bark has long been used for medicinal purposes. It is now ground fine and is kept for sale in drug stores, but formerly it was a household remedy which most families in the country provided and kept in store along with catnip, mandrake, sage, dogwood blossoms, and other rural remedies which were depended upon to rout diseases in the days when physicians were few. The slippery elm bark was peeled from the tree in long strips, the rough outer layers were shaved off, leaving the mucilaginous inner layer. That was from an eighth to a quarter of an inch thick. It was dried and put away for use. When needed it was pounded to a pulp, moistened with water, and applied as a poultice, if an external remedy was wanted. If a medicine was needed, a decoction was drunk as tea. There is no question that the remedy often produced good results when no doctor was within reach. A well-known medical writer said three-quarters of a century ago that the slippery elm tree was worth its weight in gold.

The range of slippery elm extends from the lower St. Lawrence river through Canada to North Dakota. It is found in Texas as far west as the San Antonio river, and its western limit is generally from 200 to 300 miles west of the Mississippi river. Its range extends south nearly to the Gulf of Mexico. It is not this tree’s habit to grow in thick stands, but it occurs singly or in small groups on the banks of streams or on rich hillsides.

The average size is scarcely half that of white elm. Few trees exceed a height of seventy feet and a diameter of two. It grows rapidly at first, but does not live to old age. The crown lacks the symmetry and beauty so conspicuous in white elm. The limbs follow no law of regularity, but leave the trunk at haphazard. The fruit is mature before the leaves are half grown. The seeds have more wing area than those of white elm; and, like those of white elm, the wing surrounds the flat seed on all its edges. The leaves are rough to the touch, and when crumpled in the hand, the crunching sensation is unpleasant.

Next to white elm, slippery elm appears to be more abundant than any other member of the group; but statistics do not give the basis for close estimates. The factories of Michigan use 3,700,000 feet of slippery elm a year, and 44,000,000 of white elm. The proportion of slippery to white is larger in the factories of Illinois.

The uses are the same as for other elms. The wood is rated more durable than the others, but it is not in much demand for outdoor work where resistance to decay is an important consideration. It is sometimes set for fence posts, but the results are scarcely satisfactory, particularly for round posts which are largely sapwood. Posts sawed from the heartwood of large trees would do better. The deeper red of the heartwood gives it an advantage over the other elms for furniture and finish where natural colors are shown; but this is not important because no elm’s natural color stands for much in the estimation of users of fine woods. The more common use of slippery elm is for boxes and cooperage. Next to red gum, it is employed in larger quantities for cooperage in Illinois than any other wood.

The supply is rapidly decreasing. The cut for lumber is the chief drain, but a not inconsiderable one is the peeling of trees for bark. This goes on all over the species’ range and much of it is done by boys with knives and hatchets. It is often hard to find slippery elms within miles of a town, because all have succumbed to bark hunters.

CEDAR ELM (Ulmus crassifolia) appears to bear this name because it is often found associated with red cedars on the dry limestone hills of Texas. There is little in the form and appearance of the tree to suggest the tall, tapering conical crown of cedar. There is still less in the wood. In some parts of Texas the species is called red elm, on account of the color of the wood, while in Arkansas, which is near the northern boundary of its range, it is locally known as basket elm, because basket makers find desirable qualities in its wood. It is a species of rather limited range, but it is abundant in certain regions. It is found as far east as Sunflower river, Mississippi, north into Arkansas, west to Pecos river, Texas, and south into Mexico. It is confined to three states, this side the Rio Grande. Trees on dry hills are inclined to be shrubby, but in damp valleys where soil is fertile, specimens attain a height of eighty feet and a diameter of three, but the average is not nearly so large. The leaves are small but numerous. The flowering habits of this elm are somewhat erratic. The usual time for bloom to appear is August, and a month or six weeks afterwards the small seeds are ready for flight; but occasionally, as if not satisfied with its first effort, the tree blooms again in October, and ripens a second crop late in the fall. The seeds are poorly supplied with wings, which are reduced to narrow margins surrounding the seed. It does not appear, however, that the species is in any way handicapped in securing reproduction. The small shoots are equipped with flat, corky keels, similar to but much smaller than those of the wing elm.

This tree is important for the lumber it produces. It is the common and most abundant elm of Texas, and it is found in a large part of that state. The wood is the weakest of the elms, and is likewise quite brittle; but in the region where it is most abundant it compares favorably with any other. The best is cut from the largest trees, which grow in valleys where moisture is abundant. The growth found on the dry hills is of poor quality, and is worth little, even for fuel. The highest development in Texas, and also the highest in the species’ range, is in the valleys of Trinity and Guadalupe rivers. In Texas this wood is employed in furniture factories as inside frames, to be covered by other woods, but it is not employed as outside parts of furniture, unless in very cheap kinds. It is suitable for drain boards and floors of refrigerators where it is wet much of the time. Under such circumstances it is more easily kept clean than most other woods. It whitens with repeated scrubbings. One of its most common uses in Texas is for wagon hubs. Some wheelwrights pronounce it next to the best native wood for that purpose, the first place being accorded Osage orange. The tree is often planted for shade along the streets of Texas towns, and develops thick crowns and satisfactory forms.