The Rock Elm of the Dominion Arboretum

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.