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September AMERICAN ELM (Ulmus americana) ON HUMEWOOD AVENUE If cities are fragile ecosystems, as the great urban thinker Jane Jacobs wrote, then long-living urban trees must be among the most resilient and persistent organisms within those ecosystems. In their constant and remarkably successful battle for survival, their few insurmountable adversaries include insect pests and disease. Except, that is, now and then. With a height of 27 metres and a span of 18 metres, this monumental American Elm on Humewood Avenue dwarfs houses on the entire residential block. It is a singularly important story about survival, being one of perhaps a dozen spared from Dutch elm disease which killed over 35,000 American Elms in Toronto in the 1960’s. This beloved Elm is confined within a one-metre strip of land between the sidewalk and the road. Once it stood as part of parkland in a country estate; now its huge trunk bulges out over the curb in anact of defiance against the incursion of concrete on one side and asphalt on the other. But it resists with more than just “a little help from its friends,” the neighbourhood residents, for whom it has become a much-loved symbol of community focus and activism. When its trunk was split by a storm putting it in imminent danger of removal, it was the community who rallied to save the tree, by persuading the City to install a series of cables to secure the branches, and stainless steel braces to repair the trunk. Extreme measures, perhaps, but not that different from life enhancing surgery for humans to replace hips or to insert steel pins to stabilize wobbly knees. For many, this Elm is a cherished great grandparent, deserving of the best that tree surgery can offer to extend its grand existence. According to tree activist Madeleine McDowell, this elm, at more than 200 years of age, may be part of a remnant forest. It may also have considerable heritage value as one of the original trees in the estate ofWilliam Hume Blake (1809-1870), a reformer who became Solicitor General for the province of Canada West in 1849. As such, it is an excellent candidate for designation under the Ontario Heritage Tree Program. Photographs and Texts Copyright © Vincenzo Pietropaolo, 2010 Back To:
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