Courtesy of UMass News & Media: https://www.umass.edu/gateway/feature/reviving-noble-elm
It takes the mind of an urban forester to envision how a seed the size of a pinky nail will grow into a towering elm tree.
“That’s the future, right there,” says Justin Hailey ’18S, ’20, as he gently pokes an elm seed into a seed tray in the potting classroom of the UMass Amherst College of Natural Sciences Research and Education Greenhouse.
Hailey is one of 16 arboriculture/urban forestry students in the community forestry course taught by Richard Harper, Extension assistant professor in the department of environmental conservation. On an April afternoon, his class planted six different varieties of American elm seeds provided by the USDA Forest Service lab in Delaware, Ohio.
Harper’s class is taking part in a UMass field trial of Dutch elm disease-resistant trees. American elms, with their graceful, vase-like shape and rapid growth, were once ubiquitous and beloved street trees, but Dutch Elm disease notoriously wiped out most of them by the mid-20th...