By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on October 29, 2004
Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of the Common Exotics!) The plant of the month for November is cedar elm (Ulmus crassifolia), by far the most common elm in this part of the Hill Country. It grows in a range of environments from dry hills to damp stream bottoms.
For landscaping, it is a handsome medium-size tree that grows fairly fast and is highly drought-tolerant, once established. Cedar elms are widely available at local nurseries.
In our area, cedar elms seem to be the first harbinger of fall. The cedar elms along the usually-dry creek in back of our house start to turn pale yellow before other trees and bushes show any sign of change from summer to fall. In years when the first frost comes soon enough, cedar elm leaves turn golden yellow, sometimes with a touch of orange. In those years the whole creek bottom seems to glow in the fall sunlight.
Cedar elms are almost as pretty in the spring as in the fall. No matter how short our winters are around here, it is always hopeful to see the early-spring pale-green leaves sprouting on the cedar elms. By late spring, the elms are densely covered with one- to two-inch-long dark-green leaves.
The small leaves of cedar elm are oval-shaped with finely toothed edges. They are rough to the touch. Young branches and twigs on cedar elms commonly have a pair of thin lateral corky wings. The only other species of elm to have corky flanges is the winged elm (Ulmus alata), native to East Texas.
We are not the only ones who enjoy those cedar elms on the back of our lot. Every January a pair of red-shouldered hawks come to the same 45-foot cedar elm to build a new nest high in the barren branches. By the time eggs are laid in late spring, the large nest is hidden away in the protection of dense foliage.
One caution in planting cedar elms: they may produce profuse amounts of seed in the fall. Because of this, it is best to plant them away from flower beds. When we used to have a cedar elm near the house, I spent many hours during the summers pulling cedar elm seedlings out of flowerbeds. One year, hundreds of seedlings even came up inside the greenhouse. Apparently, the seed are easily distributed by the wind.
The Boerne Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas provides free planting and care instructions for cedar elm at Boerne nurseries participating in Operation NICE!: Hill Country African Violets and Nursery, Barkley’s Nursery Center and Maldonado Landscape and Nursery. Other nurseries participating in NICE!, through the cooperation of the Blanco County Master Gardeners, are Blanco Gardens in Blanco, The Old Lumber Yard in Johnson City and The Planter Box in Marble Falls.
Plants propagated from cedar elms native to this region may survive droughts better than ones imported from farther north.
As the generic name Ulmus might suggest, the Spanish word for elm is olmo. This is a name familiar to residents of the San Antonio area, as in Olmos Basin and Olmos Park. The specific name crassifolia comes from the thick, rough leaves.
A couple of years ago, I took Mark Duff of the Texas Forestry Service up to Curry Creek to see a giant bald cypress tree, which I knew as a teenager when I visited good friends on the Myers’ ranch south of Kendalia. Mark Duff is the person who measured the state champion bald cypress, which grows in the Frio River basin.
I thought this Kendall County cypress might rival the state champion, but Mark concluded that it is just a hair smaller than the champion (a thin hair, I’d say). However, Mark marveled at the size of the cedar elm where we parked on the road that day.
After we measured the bald cypress, we made some preliminary measurements and estimates on the big cedar elm. Mark checked the record book and found it to be a likely contender for state champion. Some time later, he and coworkers returned to make official measurements. The tree has a circumference of 131 inches, height of 73 feet, and crown spread of 72 feet. That tree south of Kendalia is now the official state champion cedar elm.
