The Elms on the Rocks

Two American elms grow straight out of exposed bedrock east of Central Park's Mall, their roots spread flat across the rock like something poured rather than planted. NYC Parks designates them as two separate Great Trees, ids 38 and 39, but they stand close enough on the same outcrop that almost nobody visits one without the other. The rock underneath predates both trees by a margin that makes their own age beside the point. This is Manhattan schist, some of it dated by geologists at over a billion years old, exposed here by the same nineteenth century landscaping that shaped the rest of the park. The trees carry no planting record of their own, each roughly 78 feet tall, trunks gnarled from decades of finding purchase where there is barely any soil to root in. What they prove is less about age than persistence. An elm in open parkland can be felled by disease or storm in a season. One growing out of solid rock has already solved a harder problem, and its awkward, rock gripping shape is the visible record of that fight. They sit a few hundred metres from the Mall's elm allee and about 600 metres from the Ramble, an easy stop on the same walk through the park's oldest plantings.