Siberian Elms

Weather: It rained five of the last seven days.  While my drainage ditches were filled, the water didn’t fall hard enough at any one time to cause flooding.  So, I still don’t know what problems I will have after my uphill neighbor scraped his field bare.

Last useful rain: 10/8.  Week’s low: 45 degrees F.  Week’s high: 70 degrees F in the shade.  No winds reported over 25 mph in Los Alamos or Santa Fé.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, desert willow, Japanese honeysuckle, silver lace vines, morning glories, Russian sage, red amaranth, Maximilian sunflowers, cushion chrysanthemums, zinnias, marigolds, yellow cosmos

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, datura, leather leaf globe mallow in afternoons, purple mat flower, white pigweed, lambs’ quarters, goat’s heads, chamisa, snakeweed broom, native sunflowers, ánil del muerto, broom senecio, Hopi tea, dandelion, purple and golden hairy asters, Nebraska sedge, cheat grass

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature and floribunda roses, yellow potentillas, hollyhocks, large flowered soapwort, pink evening primroses, chocolate flowers, Mexican hats, black-eyed Susans, blanket flowers, plains coreopsis, anthemis

What’s blooming from this year’s seed: Sensation cosmos

What’s turning red: Leaves on sandcherries, Virginia creeper, toothed spurge

Whats turning orange: Leaves on choke cherry; peach leaves drop immediately.

What’s turning yellow: Leaves on sweet cherry drop immediately

What’s turning brown: Russian thistles

Animal sightings: Rabbit, starlings, goldfinches, cabbage butterfly, bumble bee, crickets, grasshoppers, harvester and sidewalk ants

Tasks: Some hay fields cut.

Weekly update: Now is the season for hunting Siberian elms.  During the summer they grow up inside shrubs where they are invisible, but as those shrubs drop their leaves the elms are revealed.

The species’ tan, papery seeds have regular habits.  When they are ripe, they are blown by the wind until they hit some obstructions.  My neighbor has a large tree is front, whose seeds blow into the shrubs lining the driveway, or hit the garage.  Seeds from the trees in back of his house drop when they hit the shrubs in back of my house.

The mystery this year was the number on the far side of the house.  It has been years since my uphill neighbor had a mature tree.  The seeds only live about eight years, and that’s if they are in dry, cool conditions. [1]

This year I pulled twenty seedlings around one sapling that had gotten to be about 4' tall.  I finally realized they were just south of the utility pole.  Apparently it, or the transformer at the top, is enough to arrest the flights.

This year’s dramatic weather has exacerbated the problems.  It was a dry, hot spring.  My neighbor’s front tree began turning green the first of April, but the ones in back looked dead.

The big winds occurred from April 22 to April 25.  A few days later, I began finding seeds on my back porch and in the newly cleared beds where they don’t normally land.   I constantly was removing them when I was planting my flower seeds.

Then, the spring drought was broken by rain on June 18.  By the end of the first week of July my neighbor’s dormant trees began to leaf.  I don’t think they flowered.

More sustained rains began the end of July.  Seeds take about six days to germinate when the temperature and moisture conditions are right. [2]  After a month they may reach 4" in ideal conditions. [3]

I pulled seedlings around the utility pole on September 18, which were at their second leaves and about 2" high.  They may have germinated three weeks before, around August 28.  While it had begun raining on August 15, the flooding rain had occurred August 26.  They were probably the children of the deluge.

No matter how vigilant, there always are the ones that get away.  I’ve found more this year than usual.  Most would have sprouted one to two years ago, and remained camouflaged.  So far, the trunks still are pliable, and I can pull them over gravel and weigh the heads down to spray with an herbicide.  Before that, I cut all the branches that won’t be treated.  I only do this with trees that are not too close to existing plants, since the poison can migrate from root to root underground.

My biggest problem was one that grew inside the beauty bush.  It has gotten as tall as the back porch, so it was not visible last summer until it was higher than the roof.  By then the trunk was 2.5" across and had become rigid.

I had to hire someone to remove it.  The crew couldn’t just cut it down.  One man used a 10' pole to hook a high branch and pull it towards an opening between the shrub and a neighboring rose of Sharon.  When it was in position, the other man was able to cut it down.

It very likely will grow back.  Elms do not die when they are cut; new growth emerges from the leaf buds buried between the bark and the wood.  A single tree can become a shrub or copse.  When I looked at the stump of this one, I saw two earlier stems had been cut.

Notes on photographs:
1.  Moss in shadow of east retaining wall and fence, 3 October 2022.
2.  Siberian elm (Ulmus pumila) growing in row of shrubs, 4 November 2021.
3.  Same Siberian elm being pulled down to be cut, 16 September 2021.
4.  Stump of same Siberian elm, 8 October 2021.

End notes:
1.  Kenneth A. Brinkman.  “Ulmus L. Elm.”  829–834 in Seeds of Woody Plants in the United States, edited by C. S.  Schopmeyer.  Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, 1974.  Technically, seeds and their papery envelopes are called samaras. To remain viable, they need to be kept at 36F to 40F.

2.  Jeong-Ho Song, Hyo-In Lim, and Kyung-Hwan Jang.  “Germination Behaviors and Seed Longevities of Three Ulmus Species in Korea.”  Korean Journal of Plant Resources 24(4):438–444:August 2011.  Cited by Lee.

3.  Hwa Lee, Gyu Han Il and Eun Ju Cheong.  “Effect of Different Treatments and Light Quality on Ulmus Pumila L. Germination and Seedling Growth.”  Forest Science and Technology 17(3):162–168:2021.