The Rock Elm of the Dominion Arboretum
How do I find it? You can recognise it by its species, rock elm, one of only three elms native to Canada. It stands in the Dominion Arboretum as a nursery-raised horticultural form, planted about half a century ago.
Dutch elm disease is remembered for what it did to the American elm, and it took this tree's species down with it. The rock elm is one of only three elms native to Canada, ranging up into southern Ontario and Quebec, and the same fungus that stripped the arching elms off North American streets went through rock elm as well. Quebec listed it as threatened in 2005. So a healthy, mature rock elm standing in a protected arboretum is worth the detour, even though it is young by the standards of this map. The National Capital Commission's register says it has grown at the Dominion Arboretum for about half a century, which is the register's own loose phrasing and the only dating anybody has offered. Call it roughly 45 to 60 years and leave it at that until someone counts rings. One caveat that changes what you are looking at. The register describes this tree as a horticultural form of the species rather than the wild type, meaning a nursery selection planted here deliberately. It is not a rock elm that held on by itself nearby, and it is no evidence that the species is quietly surviving in the Ottawa valley. What it is instead is a chance to stand in front of a Canadian native most Canadians have never knowingly seen. No girth has been published.
- Species
- Rock Elm (Ulmus thomasii)
- Location
- Dominion Arboretum, Central Experimental Farm, Ottawa, ON (Central Experimental Farm / The Glebe)
- Access
- Free. Inside the Dominion Arboretum at the Central Experimental Farm (a National Historic Site of Canada); open dawn to dusk year-round, no entry fee, free parking on site (Friends of the Central Experimental Farm visitor information).
- Getting there
- About a 10-15 minute walk from Dow's Lake, where the Century Willow and Turn-of-the-Century Linden (ott_013, ott_014) stand at the south end of Queen Elizabeth Driveway; OC Transpo stops serve Prince of Wales Drive and Carling Avenue at the farm's edges.
The button above opens directions in your maps app.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from.
- canada-capital-ncc-remarkable-trees (objectid 56, NCC 'A Living Legacy')
- en.wikipedia.org
- treecanada.ca
Trees nearby
Discover more
Ticking this one off, walks past several more, and your collection growing city by city: that is the Ancient Trees app.
Get the appThis page was researched from a distance. If you know this tree, you know things we do not: the species, the age, the size, whether the photo shows the right tree, or that it is gone. Every field on this page can be corrected.
Correct a detail on this pageSuggest another tree