The Moore-Turner Elm

Two credible people have looked at this elm and come back with different species. The City of Spokane's heritage register calls it an American elm, Ulmus americana, 88 feet tall with a 44 foot crown. The 2012 survey published by HistoryLink, citing Robert Van Pelt, who wrote Champion Trees of Washington State and coordinated the national big tree programme here, calls the registered elm in these gardens a European or Russian white elm, Ulmus laevis, and ranks it third largest of that species in the state. Both accounts point at the same tree in the same garden. Nobody has settled it. The disagreement matters less standing under it than it looks in print, because either answer is a reason to go. A large American elm is a survivor, since Dutch elm disease took most of the big ones across North America inside a generation. A state-ranked white elm is rarer still, a Eurasian species almost nobody here plants. The garden was laid out from the 1890s by Frank Rockwood Moore and the United States senator George Turner, left to go wild for decades, and dug back out as the Moore-Turner Heritage Gardens. The elm is the one big tree among terraces given over to roses, perennials and a tea house. Check the calendar first. The gardens open 16 May to 15 September, Tuesday to Sunday, 9am to 3:30pm, and are locked the rest of the year.