Paint Rock’s elms aren’t supposed to exist. Or at least, they’re supposed to be very unhappy and all near death. But the truth is Alabama’s many species of elms are all about as happy as trees can be in a world like this one. They’re mostly thriving. And if you understand why they’re defying so many assumptions, you’ll get a clue how important Paint Rock will be to the future of Eastern North America’s forests. Scientists started writing off the future of Alabama elms almost a century ago, when Dutch elm disease began wiping out elms at an astonishing rate in major cities in the northern half of the country. This introduced disease took a small bite out of elms initially, and then seemed to mutate into something even more deadly by the 1950s.
The disaster was painful and conspicuous. American elms, one of the species most susceptible to the disease, was also one of the most widely planted trees in the nation. Elms lined the streets of Boston, Philadelphia and Minneapolis the way live oaks now line so many streets in Mobile. Their architecture created high tunnels over America’s new neighborhoods, and they made the endless lines of houses and the fresh concrete seem welcoming.
But by the 1970s, literally millions of trees were dead or dying, tree after tree, down all the streets they were planted on. The death was so catastrophic, and the falling limbs so threatening, cities pre-emptively removed the remaining elms, and discouraged folks from ever planting them again.
And because Alabama too often mimics its northern neighbors without thinking, Birmingham, Huntsville and many other Alabama cities followed suit, virtually banning native elms from city streets. This was particularly harsh, because cities like Huntsville and Birmingham were known not just for their American elms, but for their many other species of native elms, like the magnificent September elms, which were unheard of farther north.
And to this day, urban planners and foresters will look at you like you you’re crazy if you suggest replanting our cities with native elms. They’ve read all the books written up north: Surely these elms would be a disaster. To add insult to injury, nurseries have unleashed a host of really weedy, brittle and just plain obnoxious elms from Asia and Europe in an ill-advised attempt to “replace” our native elms.
It’s too bad we don’t know as much about our own Alabama forests as we know about the trees in Boston. Because American elm is abundant, and at times almost weedy, in Alabama forests. There are tens of thousands of tall and healthy specimens in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, and on the banks above. Elms still grow tall at Elm Bluff near Selma and at Elm Grove near Birmingham, and there are four or five native species of elms abundant in the Paint Rock Research Center forests, which may represent the greatest concentration of native elm species in North America.
Sure Dutch elm disease shows up occasionally, just to let you know it has made its way to Alabama. But most of our trees never show any symptoms, and death from it is so rare in our forests, even those of us who spend a lot of our time looking at elms will never see it happen. So how in the world are all these elms continuing to do so well in Alabama, when they died by the millions in so many other places in the
United States? Well, there’s an important story there about the unusual and ancient genetic heritage of our elms, and a lesson in why it would pay us in Alabama to understand where we are from. And it helps explain why our research at Paint Rock is so important to all of North America.