CORK ELM
(Ulmus Racemosa)

This tree is called cork elm in Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, and Ohio; rock elm in Rhode Island, Kentucky, West Virginia, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska; hickory elm in Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana; white elm in Ontario; Thomas elm in Tennessee; northern cork-barked elm in Tennessee; corkbark elm, New York; northern cork elm, Vermont; wahoo, Ohio; cliff elm in Wisconsin.

Cork elm is the natural name. It is a descriptive term which a stranger would be apt to apply on seeing the tree for the first time. The bark of the branches, after it has attained an age of three or four years, becomes rough by the growth of ridges and protuberances. This feature is sometimes so prominent that it at once attracts attention, particularly when the branches are bare of leaves; hence the name cork elm.

Lumbermen insist on naming the tree rock elm. They refer to the hardness of the wood, or they may have in mind the dry, stony situations where tough, strong elm grows. The latter is often the case, because the name is applied also to slippery elm and white elm if they grow on stony ground. A wide-spread opinion prevails that wood which grows among rocks is harder, tougher, stronger, and more durable than that produced by deep, fertile soil. It is possible to cite much evidence to support that view, and the case might be considered proved, but for the fact that an equal, or greater amount of evidence, in every way as trustworthy, may be cited on the other side. The strongest hickory, ash, and oak do not come from stony land. It sometimes happens that a species with tough, strong wood, is found on rocks, but it is not tough because it is there, but in spite of being there.

The name cliff elm which this tree bears in Wisconsin is but another form of the name rock elm, and clearly has reference to the situation where the tree grows in that part of the country. Hickory elm, on the other hand, a name applied to this tree much farther south, is a recognition of the wood’s toughness.

In some particulars it does not fall much below hickory in toughness, but is not as strong, elastic, or capable of as smooth polish. The latter property is one of the recommendations of hickory when used for handles. It is very smooth to the touch; cork elm is less so. In the northern woods, elm ax handles are in use, and some axmen prefer them to hickory. Such is probably the case when the best cork elm and a medium or poor quality of hickory are in competition.

The fibers of cork elm are interlaced, rendering the splitting of the wood difficult. For uses in which that is a desirable property, it is preferable to hickory. It is better for hubs for large wagons, and that is a very important use for this elm.

The wood of all the elms is ring-porous; that is, the springwood, or inner part of the annual ring, consists of one or more rows of large ducts. The summerwood contains pores in large numbers, but they are small, and are usually arranged in short curved lines. The medullary rays are not prominent in the wood of any of the elms, and quarter-sawing adds no beauty to the lumber. The wood is practically without figure, on account of either annual rings or medullary rays; but it may be stained, polished, and made very attractive. That is done oftener with white elm than with any other.

The strength of cork elm created demand for it in boat building at an early day. The tree is and always was scarce in the vicinity of the Atlantic sea board, and the earliest boat builders seem not to have been acquainted with the wood. It was most abundant in the forests of Michigan, though it extended westward to Nebraska. It was plentiful in the province of Ontario, and the timbers from that region acquainted English shipbuilders with the merits of the wood. They sent contractors into Michigan to buy cork elm, long before the other hardwoods of that region had attracted the attention of the outside world. The most convenient supplies of cork elm on the Lower Michigan peninsula thus passed through Canada to ship yards on the other side of the sea. The wood is reputed to be more durable than any of the other elms.

It is generally understood that the country’s supply of cork elm is running short, but there are no statistics which show how much is left or how much has been cut. It is doubtful if the original forests, including the whole country, had one tree of cork elm to twenty of white elm. The average size of cork elm is sixty feet high and two in diameter. The trunks are well shaped, if forest grown. They develop small crowns in proportion to the size of trunks; and the crowns are less graceful than those of white elm—lacking the long, sweeping curves of the latter. The general contour of the tree has been compared to white oak.

Cork elm grows well when planted on the Pacific coast, in environments quite different from its native habitat. In the forest it increases in size slowly; when planted it makes much better headway. It has a disagreeable habit of sprouting which puts it out of favor as a park tree.

The wood of the different elms is largely used for manufacturing purposes. They are sometimes kept separate, but generally not. The particular place where cork elm is preferred is in the manufacture of vehicles and boats, but it is by no means confined to those commodities.

The state of Michigan alone sends 50,000,000 feet of elm a year to its factories to be converted into articles of general utility. Furniture makers take over 2,000,000 feet of it, though elm is not classed as a furniture wood. In certain places it is superior to almost every other wood. No matter how discolored it becomes by weathering and the accumulation of foreign substances, a vigorous application of soap, water, and a scrubbing brush will whiten it. It is liked in certain parts of refrigerators which need constant scrubbing. Elm to the extent of 8,000,000 feet goes into refrigerators in Michigan alone.

The strength and toughness of elm make it suitable for frames of tables. When thus used, it is generally out of sight, but not infrequently it is made into table legs as well as frames. Statistics show that more than a million feet are manufactured yearly into handles in Michigan alone. All three of the northern elms—white, cork, and slippery—are listed in the handle industry.

Many millions of feet of elm are yearly converted into automobile stock—3,000,000 in Michigan. Horse-drawn vehicles take more. The most common place for it is the hub, but it serves also as shafts, poles, reaches, and even as spokes for wagons of the largest size.

The important place in the slack cooperage industry held by elm is well known. It is a flour barrel wood, but is employed for barrels of many other kinds. It stands high as veneer, not the kind of which the visible parts of furniture are made, but the invisible interior, built up of veneer sheets glued together. A similar kind of veneer forms the boxes or frames of trunks—the part to be covered by metal, leather, or cloth. The slats which strengthen the outside of trunks are frequently of elm.

This wood is not in favor for one important purpose, hardwood distillation. It has escaped pretty generally also from being employed as a farm material, on account of its poor lasting qualities. Some slippery elm was mauled into fence rails in the pioneer days of Ohio, Indiana, and southern Michigan, but that was only because it was plentiful and convenient. Cork elm probably never made a fence rail, because it is so unwedgeable that no rail splitter would have anything to do with it. At the best, it is but a temporary makeshift as fence posts, but by applying creosote and other preservative treatments to lessen decay, it measures up with most other post woods.

The elms are not indispensable woods in this country, but their exhaustion, should it ever come, will leave many places hard to fill. As far as known, no woodlots of any species of elm have been planted in this country, and there is little prospect that any will be planted, because the slow growth of the trees discourages foresters. A century or two is a long look ahead.

However, the exhaustion of no species of the elms in this country need be expected soon. The most apparent peril lies ahead of cork elm, because it never was abundant, and demand, which has been large for a long time, is still strong. The species is scattered over more than 200,000 square miles, and a long time must elapse before the last cork elm finds its way to the sawmill. The situation of white elm is more promising. It may be among the last trees of the American forests to take its final departure. Its wide range and its bounteous seed crops insure a supply, though not necessarily a large one, for a long time. The greatest peril to elms, as well as to many other forest trees, is that, when weakened by depletion, some disease will attack them and destroy the remnants. Experience in New England and elsewhere has shown that elm has no great resisting power when a strong attack is made upon it.