Look at the road behind you

[sovay]

Finally, the day is clear enough for me to get a good spring picture of the Jefferson elm on our street. I'm not sure how old it is, except not very. Per A Canterbury Tale (1944): "You can't hurry an elm."



My niece wanted to know what was so special about it, so I wound up explaining Dutch elm disease and the importance of resistant trees, like the survivor on the National Mall from which this sapling was cultivated. The city seems to have accepted us adopting it under the name of Bella Ptelea. That's pte-re-wa in Linear B.

Comments

[cmcmck]

All the wonderful elms around Canterbury, including in the village of Wickhambreaux where parts of the film were made, that I knew as an undergrad all went during that outbreak.

'Epitaph for the Elm' is a photographic book I picked up at the time and I still feel there's a poem there somewhere.

There are still a few skeletal elms in the landscape here in Shropshire.

[selkie]

*hugs*
AN ELM TREE, OMG. A REAL ELM TREE!

[ashlyme]

Thank you so much for this! Elms are sort of mythical trees for me. They passed when I was very young. I don't know if my memory of them of standing in the field acoss the canal, thronged with rooks, is a true one. I hope so. My dad can recall them growing here. The next village/suburb up from here is called Elmdon Heath, so at least they live on in names. (The fictional stand-in for my home is Elmsford. It feels right.)

[jesse_the_k]

I remember seeing them dying, and I'm so glad to know they're coming back! After the elms died in Madison they foolishly replaced 1 to 1 with ash trees, which grow faster and have been savaged by the emerald ash borer in the last decade. Finally learning the lessons and replacing with a variety of street trees.

My intro to grassroots politics was my mother joining many other dendrophiles to keep sycamores on the banks of the Charles.

[nineweaving]

Oh, how lovely! There are still a few jealously coddled wineglass elms in the Yard. "She Undoes" is about one of them.

Nine

[a_reasonable_man]

Hope is a budding elm sapling.