Is Elm making a comeback or is it just a fairytale?

[Stereo]

I think you should fell it young. My understanding is that if the disease gets right into the root it can kill it. Fell it before it starts to show and the roots will sucker up again. Bit like coppicing I suppose. Keep the root alive.

 

As has been said, amazing firewood.

[face cord]

Shame you can't buy reistant ones at a resonable price, some have being developed:

 

Dutch elm disease - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

In the UK, clones from one of the elms that have so far survived in an area of high infectivity are now available commercially. Mr Paul King of King&Co The Tree Nursery took cuttings from an elm, thought to be nearly 200 years old, located in Essex (probably Ulmus minor subsp. minor, or a local hybrid), in 1990. Having potted the cuttings and found that the trees had indeed a high level of resistance to DED, Mr King then cultivated these cuttings via micro-propagation and now has over 2000 resistant trees for sale to the general public at around 10 foot tall.

 

Wonder if the earliest ones from 1990 are still ok?

 

Says high lvl of resitance...

 

They are very expensive

[treedom]

Do the beetles wait for height or is it maturity?

 

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[HCR]

Do the beetles wait for height or is it maturity?

 

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Diameter, I think, correlates positively with host selection.

[Mycoman]

It only really struck me recently how many elms are about, but now they grow more as hedges. They're great for logs - don't need to split them - and my pigs will eat elm leaves in preference to almost anything else.

 

I presume it's possible to dig up suckers to transplant?

[tree monkey]

so does the beetle live on anything else?

[David Goss]

so does the beetle live on anything else?

 

I guess that's the key to stopping it. If the beetle dies out then it won't attack any more elms. I figure that's how the cycles come about as well because once all the beetles victims are gone it will have to move on or die out. Someone in the know about this beetle can jump in now

[kev7937]

I guess that's the key to stopping it. If the beetle dies out then it won't attack any more elms. I figure that's how the cycles come about as well because once all the beetles victims are gone it will have to move on or die out. Someone in the know about this beetle can jump in now

 

Thats the thing though, every year elms die then they sucker then they get to x height then the beetles feed on them and infect them because they ate infected elms for brekkie.

 

I think so anyway, just hope someone more knowledgeable doesn't come along and shoot me down, call me a halfwit and be generally rude about the whole business:001_smile:

[David Goss]

Thats the thing though, every year elms die then they sucker then they get to x height then the beetles feed on them and infect them because they ate infected elms for brekkie.

 

I think so anyway, just hope someone more knowledgeable doesn't come along and shoot me down, call me a halfwit and be generally rude about the whole business:001_smile:

 

if someone laughs at you for having your own ideas then they are the halfwits. I find most times the so called experts are only guessing themselves and some of them can be complete halfwits!! best to keep your own views and believe others only when there is solid proof that you understand perfectly.

Saying that though i could be a halfwit too:001_tt2:

[agg221]

In East Anglia there's a lot of Plot elm, which sets fertile seed. It also hybridizes with the English elm and produces fertile hybrids. This creates a broader gene pool.

 

There appear to be varying degrees of resistance - some trees can get to a decent size - 100ft, 2ft dia, then succumb. There's a row near me of about seven trees, all around 2ft6-3ft dia. One of them got it in 2010, and has come back strongly. Two more got it this year. It will be interesting to see what happens next year. If they all come back, I think it's a fair certainty that this particular population is highly resistant. I know of half a dozen more very large trees in this area that are doing similarly well, surrounded by dead hedgerow trees of about 25ft.

 

The real challenge is that to demonstrate this level of resistance simply through survival you are waiting 50+ years. There are a lot of other things that result in trees not making it to that age in a non-rural location. Once trees get very large, so you can be confident that they are truly resistant, they are into old age anyway so other causes of death become likely.

 

The challenge is in encouraging the spread of genetic diversity, derived from resistant populations. You can propagate elm vegetatively from cuttings, which at least helps build up the resistant population by planting them widely. Assuming these are also fertile you then enhance the overall population through breeding of resistant populations.

 

There are a couple of reasonable sized elms where I work (18" dia) which are highly likely to be felled next year as part of a building regeneration scheme. This is the type of thing which is more likely to take out resistant populations than anything else - rather akin to the panic felling of large numbers of ash trees. I am hoping that the trees can be left up until June and I can then propagate like mad to preserve this particular genetic strain. I might end up with a house full of cuttings at this rate!

 

Alec