Popular Woodworking 2004-08 № 142, страница 69

it a tough wood that's difficult to split. Working with elm requires sharp hand tools and strong muscles. Elm has a light grayish-brown tint and an attractive herringbone grain pattern, which many say takes a finish beautifully.

Elm also has high elasticity and wears well. Because of this, elm has been used by humans throughout history. According to Elmcare.com, in North America the Iroquois used elm bark to make many useful items including canoes, ropes, utensils and roofing. In Japan, the Ainu used elm bark to make clothing. Romans tied grapevines to living elms.

In Britain, elm was a choice wood for the hubs of wagon wheels, barrels, tables and chairs. Shaker boxmaker John Wilson of Charlotte, Mich., has a canoe from the early 1900s with ribs made from red elm (different than American elm) in part because of red elm's light weight and ability to bend well.

Elms have woven their branches in and out of our history books, too. For example, in 1765, colonists hung effigies of Lord Butte and Andrew Oliver from Boston's Liberty Elm (perhaps the most famous American elm) in protest of the infamous Stamp Act.

Today, it's hard to travel through a town or a city in the United States without crossing an "Elm Street." Fast-growing, beautiful and tough enough to survive an urban setting with roots that rarely spoiled sidewalks, elms were planted one right next to another (a grave error) along city streets. Americans loved the way the tree's thick branches flared up and arched over our nation's concrete. Elm was considered America's shade tree.

But now only old movies and street signs remind us of what was once commonplace. Despite elms' toughness, a fungus killed an esti

mated 77 million of them.

Shipments of unpeeled veneer logs from Europe introduced two strains of Dutch elm disease to the United States. Dying American elms were first discovered in Cleveland in May 1930. By 1977, the disease, carried by the elm bark beetle (a relatively easy task because many elms were planted in rows) had spread throughout the United States, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Streets once softly darkened by elms' thick branches became bright and bare. The arboreal disaster - a nightmare on almost every "Elm Street" - had an emotional effect one can compare only to the chestnut blight, a disease that virtually eliminated American chestnuts from our forests in the early 1900s.

Cloning the Survivors

Although millions of American elms died, hundreds of thousands still exist, says Denny Townsend, a research geneticist with the U.S. National Arboretum. Some are living because they haven't been exposed to the disease. Others have shown tolerance to it. The key to the trees' survival is finding ones that don't succumb to the disease and then cloning them.

A cloned tree is called a cul-tivar. To be cloned, an elm must show signs of tolerance.

Once a tolerant American elm is identified, the soft shoots (new growths on a plant) that appear between May and July are cut from the tree. The shoots are placed in a mist system to root. The roots are then dug up and planted in pots to grow. The genetic makeup of the cuttings are exactly the same as the tree they came from, Townsend says.

Thriving Cultivars

Today, several American elm cul-tivars are gaining popularity with

names such as Liberty, Princeton, New Harmony and Valley Forge. (Think of these like you would different types of apples - Fuji, Gala and Granny Smith.)

Townsend introduced Valley Forge and New Harmony (named and released in 1995 and 1996, respectively) American elms. Valley Forge was discovered through inoculation (injecting lots of elms with the disease to see if any are tolerant). Townsend found New Harmony out in the

wild, healthy and strong. Testing proved it, too, to be tolerant to Dutch elm disease.

Both cultivars now are being offered by nurseries such as The Botany Shop Garden Center in Joplin, Mo. Its owner, Mike Shade, has sold several thousand New Harmony and Valley Forge elms (he also sells Princeton elms). They have been planted in Washington, D.C.'s, national mall area and sent to Boston's famous Arnold Arboretum.

Chairmaker Don Weber works on an American elm seat blank with a drawknife. Elm commonly is used in chairs because of its inherent strength.

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