Posting to document the development of this absolute warrior of a tree. My best guess is this little guy came up as a seedling on my property in the spring of ‘22 and grew unmolested throughout that season. As Elms saplings seem to, it grew pretty much straight up and had one offshoot branch when I pulled it as my first collection experiment in May of this year (I do not recall exactly but I know it was well after the typical collection time and it had fully leafed out).
I wasn’t sure what would happen with the late transplant and for all the world it looked dead after a couple weeks of sitting in its collection pot, losing all its leaves, and experiencing significant dieback on its lone branch after having its main trunk cut back to where it is now.
But dead it was not. Sure enough, sometime in June as my best guess it started budding on the main trunk and by July had some nice branches going. This poor thing then suffered another of my blunders with a connection failure on a homemade automated watering system while I was away for a work trip and lost most of its leaves (pictured below where photo documentation of this tree’s journey begins). However, without missing much of a beat, less than three weeks later (pictured next), it had fully leafed out and was going on about its business. I then decided to wire up the branches and between those setting and since having the wire removed and the unintended ramification achieved by a nearly full dried out leaf defoliation, I think this thing actually looks pretty awesome for my first collected tree. Final pictures are of its winter silhouette and a close up of buds in case I am one of the many on here who thought they had an American Elm but actually had something else.
I wasn’t sure what would happen with the late transplant and for all the world it looked dead after a couple weeks of sitting in its collection pot, losing all its leaves, and experiencing significant dieback on its lone branch after having its main trunk cut back to where it is now.
But dead it was not. Sure enough, sometime in June as my best guess it started budding on the main trunk and by July had some nice branches going. This poor thing then suffered another of my blunders with a connection failure on a homemade automated watering system while I was away for a work trip and lost most of its leaves (pictured below where photo documentation of this tree’s journey begins). However, without missing much of a beat, less than three weeks later (pictured next), it had fully leafed out and was going on about its business. I then decided to wire up the branches and between those setting and since having the wire removed and the unintended ramification achieved by a nearly full dried out leaf defoliation, I think this thing actually looks pretty awesome for my first collected tree. Final pictures are of its winter silhouette and a close up of buds in case I am one of the many on here who thought they had an American Elm but actually had something else.
