The difference with elms is that while Dutch Elm Disease is also destructive, it’s not quite as rampant as Chestnut Blight, to where it’s not all that unusual to see American Elms of large size here and there, but large American Chestnuts are VERY rare, some feel there are less than 100 large, healthy American Chestnuts left in North America.
I see 100 American Elms on my way to work each day. They WILL get DED and die eventually, but most of them live to be old enough to reproduce and therefore the species is a lot more common.
That said the resistant-elms could also prove to bring the species back to it’s fullest extent.
As long as elms are kept isolated, they can grow to very large size, and there’s just not enough of them to spread the disease. Also, I’ve not seen an infected elm around here in years, so the disease may have died out.
Just yesterday I was admiring a nice one in the yard of one of my mother’s neighbors, and that house was built less than 40 years ago. There’s a very nice one on the back line of the mom’s property, probably in the area of 40 years old (if that), and I plan to clear out the much smaller, more recent, and more crowded specimens nearby. :’)
Some elms were naturally immune; they’ve been bred into a resistant native elm strain which at least used to be available from the foundation that did the work.
As long as elms are kept isolated, they can grow to very large size, and there’s just not enough of them to spread the disease. Also, I’ve not seen an infected elm around here in years, so the disease may have died out.
Just yesterday I was admiring a nice one in the yard of one of my mother’s neighbors, and that house was built less than 40 years ago. There’s a very nice one on the back line of the mom’s property, probably in the area of 40 years old (if that), and I plan to clear out the much smaller, more recent, and more crowded specimens nearby. :’)
Some elms were naturally immune; they’ve been bred into a resistant native elm strain which at least used to be available from the foundation that did the work.
Thanks!