DIES FROM WITHIN

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 647, 27 September 1933, Page 7

DIES FROM WITHIN

ENGLAND'S COMMONEST TREE A DANGEROUS SPECIES. THE TREACHEROUS- ELM, It ds a pity that the elm, which is by far the commonest tree in the English countryside, is also by far tht; most treacherous. But we may console ourselves with the thought that it is not really Bntish. Experts in these matters believe that it was first hrought and planted here by the Romans. If so, They left us a baleful legacy, for elms cause more deaths than all the other trees put together, writes Montague Smith in the Daily Mail. The latest example comes from Ashtead, in Surrey, where an elm branch' fell on children bathing! in a swimming pool and killed two. Within recent weeks we have had the case of an elm branch which fell 011 people sittdng at an open-air cafe in Kensington Gardens, injuring several, and of another which fell on a Wimbledon tennis queue. The Kensington Gardens elms seem to have a specially hlack record, for in 1922 one of them fell on a taxicab in the Bayswater Road and killed the driver. Another notorious murderer was an elm at Port Talbot, in Glamorgan, whose falling branches at different times killed two men and acquired for it the title of "Traitors Elm." Instances of this kind can be multiplied indefinitely. Week hy week there is generally some record of a serious or fatal accident due to the elm, and it has passtd into proverbs as an emblem of treachery. Tsall and stately, a group of elms invite us to take shelter under them from rain. or sun. Their leaves are close and shady. Milton wrote of "the shady roof of hranching elm, star proof." It is all most seductive on a hot day. Falsgi Sturdiness. But heware! The sturdiest seeming elms are often entirely rotten at heart. The stoutest-looking branch may be nothing but dust at the c'ore. This habit of dying from within makes it unique among our common •trees. It is a sort of whited sepulchre in the woods. The branch goes on looking well and dying inside until it can no longer support itself. Not

even a puff of wind may be needed 5 to bring it down. Its hour has come — and let us hope we are not under-' neath. Elms, moreover, do not strike deep tap roots into the soil like the o:ak and oth'er 'honest British trees. They are mere piliars on a shallow platform of roots which spread laterally often as far as the tree is tall, but have no strong grip. In heavy gales, therefore, they fall like ninepins. So bad now is the elm's reputation that the OffiGe of Works recently pro'hihited th'e planting of any more in London parks, and many landowners are conducting a vigorous felling campaign against them. A mysterious malady known as Dutch elm disease, which first appeared in Holland in 1919 and has since spread extensively in iEngland, is also demolishing elms wholesale. This looks like just retribution, but may make the dying elms even more dangerous while it ravages them.