Ancient Trees in the National Mall

Each is on that list for a different reason. The Jefferson Elm is the consequential one. It went into the ground around 1935 as one of roughly 600 American elms framing the central green, Dutch elm disease killed most of the rest over the next forty years, and this one did not die. Cuttings went to nurseries in 2005 as the 'Jefferson' cultivar, so American elms are going back into streets across the country on the strength of one tree beside Jefferson Drive. The white mulberry on the Washington Monument grounds is the other kind of survivor. Days of rain loosened the ground under it in May 2019 and it went over, and instead of cutting it up the Park Service lifted it ten degrees and built it a steel crutch. It has been standing nearly horizontal ever since. Two hundred metres away a pair of catalpas flanks the Survey Lodge, a small building made of marble left over from the monument itself, and they were in the ground by 1902. The fourth belongs to the Smithsonian rather than the Park Service, at the 9th Street end: an American elm five and a half metres round, accession number 1 in their tree collection, older than the museum behind it. All four are free, outdoors and unrestricted, and it is about a kilometre and a half from the first to the last.