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Ulmus rubra
Also called Red elm, Gray Elm, Soft Elm, Slippery Ellum
Slippery elm is a medium-sized deciduous tree native to eastern North America, valued for its slimy red inner bark and reddish heartwood. It grows best in moist upland soils and has rarely done well as an ornamental, especially in cooler northern Europe.
Ulmus rubra, the slippery elm, is a species of elm native to eastern North America. Other common names include red elm, gray elm, soft elm, moose elm, and Indian elm. It is closely related to the European wych elm (U. glabra), which has a very similar flower structure but lacks the pubescence over the seed.
The species has seldom been planted for ornament in its native country, though it occasionally appeared in early 20th-century US nursery catalogues. Introduced to Europe in 1830, and later to Australasia, it has never thrived in the UK; Elwes & Henry knew of not one good specimen, and the last tree planted at Kew attained a height of only 12 m (39 ft) in 60 years. Specimens supplied by the Späth nursery of Berlin to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1902 as U. fulva may survive in Edinburgh as it was the practice of the Garden to distribute trees about the city (vide Wentworth Elm). A specimen at RBGE was felled c.1990. The current list of Living Accessions held in the Garden per se does not list the plant. The tree was propagated and marketed in the UK by the Hillier & Sons nursery, Winchester, Hampshire, from 1945, with 20 sold in the period 1970 to 1976, when production ceased. Several mature trees survive in Brighton (see Accessions).
The species is native to eastern North America, ranging from southeast North Dakota, east to Maine and southern Quebec, south to northernmost Florida, and west to eastern Texas, where it thrives in moist uplands, although it will also grow in dry, intermediate soils.
Winged elm · American elm · Ulmus 'Androssowii' · Cedar elm · Wych Elm · European White Elm · Ulmus lanceifolia · Ulmus minor 'Plotii' · Chinese elm · Siberian elm · Rock elm · Elm
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ulmus rubra by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
