The Carpenter St. Croix Valley Nature Center is a ways from the boulevards of Minneapolis, but both share a common heartache, the loss of the majestic American elm to Dutch Elm Disease.
"We saw it in the cities, because that's where we live," Linda Haugen of the U.S. Forest Service reflected, "but there are photos out there of bottomland forests with stem after stem of dead tree."
The American Elm Restoration project could eventually change the landscape of both forest and the city, and help Minnesota's elm population back to health.
Researchers have isolated and developed five varieties of elm trees that are 'tolerant' of Dutch elm. They're now planting them at five Midwestern sites, including Carpenter. "They do get the disease, but then it stops in the tree, and doesn't progress and kill the tree," Haugen explained.
Even though they were planted in the wild, the year old Delaware 2 elms started Thursday were given the white glove treatment. Planters used weed cloth, mulched with woodchips, and surrounded the tiny trees with deer fencing.
Project coordinators hope those protective steps will help this year's crop thrive like the 22 elms planted in 2005. They are flowering, and producing elm seeds that should scatter, and hopefully re-grow the natural forest that stood before Dutch Elm.
"This is a real interesting project here, to have the potential to bring the elms back into a native forest," said Carpenter Horticulturist John McPherson.
Eventually, the strains that thrive in the wild could likely be used to reforest urban areas with elm. "We can't lose all these trees," the U.S. Forest Service's Linda Haugen said.
"We've got to bring back some of those we thought we'd lost, and I think we have a chance to here."KARE 11 News
