Montreal once had roughly 22,000 American elms.
American Elm
Central Park's western edge once carried about 500 American elms. This page maps every american elm on the site, 7 so far across 4 cities.
A New York Times survey counted 23 of them in 1985, and one of the four trees mapped here is on that shortlist, standing on Central Park West opposite the natural history museum and wider than it is tall. Dutch elm disease reached the city in the 1930s and took the great majority of the elms that had shaded nearly every street in it, which is why every survivor now reads as an event. A pair east of the Mall grow straight out of exposed Manhattan schist, roots spread flat across rock over a billion years old. The avenue on the Mall itself has been replanted three times, because foot traffic kept compacting the soil, and the row you walk under now went in during the 1920s. All four are in Central Park.
Montreal
New York
Most of New York's elms are gone.
Central Park once had roughly 500 American elms along its western edge.
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.
Central Park's most photographed avenue of trees is not the original one.
Washington DC
Photo: Katy Swiere (CC BY 4.0)
Every 'Jefferson' elm planted in the United States is a cutting taken from this tree.
Quebec City
The City of Quebec's own heritage record is precise about how Grande Allee got its trees: the municipal authorities widened the avenue at the end of the 1880s and lined it with ormes d'Amerique, Am...
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