A Lesson in Forestry: The Elm Apocalypse

Dutch elm disease, which isn’t specifically “Dutch,” raged through North America in the 1960s, although the disease was introduced around 1930 by imported logs from Europe. The Asian fungus was first identified by Dutch scientists.   

The Lake States have three native elm tree species. The American elm is the most common and the standard-bearer for the genus Ulmus, in the family Ulmaceae. Then, there is red or slippery elm and, finally, rock elm. Elms have long been minor components in the eastern forests of the United States. In Michigan, as much as five percent of forest volume was elm. That percentage is now under one percent.  

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