Finding a Few Good Elms: in Search of Sylvan Elegance

The rumors of their disappearance are only slightly exaggerated.  Although rarely seen in colonnades anymore, single elm trees or small clusters still stand along roadsides, in parks, yards and on the grounds of institutions.  There’s a big one on State Route 30 across from the South Windsor firehouse, a huge umbrella of a tree near the main gate of the Woodstock Fair, and another close to the pavement on U.S. Route 44 in Pine Meadow.  Hartford’s High Street Elm, which looms seventy-nine feet over cracked parking lots, brush and a billboard in an inhospitable area just north of I-84, may be the most visible elm in New England.

Rows of elms once lined the streets of most cities and towns in the region.  They seemed the perfect urban tree.  Elms grew fast, tolerated drought, their high crowns didn’t obstruct building facades, and their broken shade allowed enough light to grow a lawn.  With tall trunks of deeply furrowed bark rising to a fountain of branches, elms have architecture of unrivaled sylvan elegance.  Connecticut was once the center of this elm dominated urban landscape, and New Haven, to this day known as the Elm City, was its capital.

Elms were planted in New Haven as early as 1685, but it became an obsession and source of civic pride by the late eighteenth century.  Along streets and on the Green the trees rose to leafy loggia, arboreal cathedrals softening the effects of urban growth.  By 1842 Charles Dickens could write that “these groups of well-grown trees, clustering among the busy streets and houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint appearance: seeming to bring about a kind of compromise between town and country.”

Large individual trees became living monuments with names and stories.  They were venerated civic landmarks.  New Haven’s long gone Benjamin Franklin Elm was planted on the day of the great man’s death in 1790 by a local eccentric poet in trade for some rum.  Until 1815, Litchfield’s Whipping Post Elm was used as a place of public punishment.  Planted in 1778, East Hartford had a row of elms left by Rochambeau’s troops.  Hartford’s Ledyard Elm near Arch Street was attributed to John Ledyard, a friend of Thomas Jefferson who sailed with Captain Cook and later died in an attempt to walk around the world.

Like many big trees of the species, the Great Elm at Wethersfield was said to have sheltered General Washington.  About 102 feet tall and forty-one feet at breast height, it was reputed to be the nation’s largest in 1945 when found to be infected with Dutch elm disease.  It succumbed in 1953 and its thirty-five ton stump was carted away on a flatbed truck.

Although street widening and modern utility systems caused damage, Dutch elm disease, introduced in the 1930s, wiped out two centuries of trees in a single generation, leaving barren neighborhoods.  The bleached hulks of dead trees marked an environmental and civic catastrophe.  Familiar places were changed suddenly and forever.

With the disease spreading rapidly, quarantine, removal and burning damaged trees was ineffective.  By 1951 over sixty Connecticut towns were spraying DDT which, though it might kill disease carrying beetles, was no cure.  Use of the chemical on elms poisoned beneficial insects, birds and other creatures and helped inspire Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, sparking the environmental revolution.

The Connecticut Botanical Society’s big tree inventory lists about fifty elms, though none as large as yesteryear’s monsters.  Greenwich hosts the current state champion which is 106 feet tall and just shy of eighteen feet in circumference.

Passionate advocates have worked hard to protect existing trees and promote resistant cultivars.  Award winning photographer Tom Zetterstrom of Canaan has been among the most tireless crusaders, not only creating compelling images, but as the founder of Elm Watch and the Adopt-an-Elm program to inventory trees in the region, sponsor life-saving injections of fungicide, and promote planting of resistant varieties.

Though the majestic green arcades of yesteryear will never return, Connecticut yet harbors a couple places where an inkling of that past can be experienced.  Whether bare or in leaf, the tall, arching elms of the New Haven Green are awe inspiring.  Their trunks rise like the columns of a grand public building while limbs arc overhead, branches reaching gracefully above the path just as Dickens described.

An alee of elms at Lakeville’s Hotchkiss School lend gravity to its main drive.  Many of the trees rise to parasol crowns hanging over the pavement, though some are yet small, having recently replaced past glory.  Nearby, old elms overtop three story redbrick classroom buildings and dorms, hinting at the dignity and grace that once clothed many Connecticut places.

Elms are not just trees, but icons of culture.  They are a lens through which we can envision colonial land clearing and nineteenth century municipal beautification, the development of urban infrastructure, the increasing importation of invasive pests, birth of the environmental movement, the social transformation of cities, and current attempts at healing the planet.

From The Hartford Courant, 10-27-2011