Having Trouble Identifying Elms? Look For This.

[Music] greetings everyone I'm Adam heritton welcome to the woods of Western Pennsylvania It's a beautiful morning it's late winter nearly spring and in this video I want to show you how you can easily locate and identify Elms specifically American elm and slippery elm when you pay attention to one feature in particular now why would I focus on Elms in this video at the exclusion of every other tree in this wooded area well the reason is morel mushroom season is nearly here or it is here for some of you and if you know anything about morels you know that certain species of morels associate with Elms and if you know where Elms grow and you can identify Elms then you can drastically increase your chances of finding certain species of morels so what is this feature of Elms that I'm talking about well let's take a look around this wooded area and let's focus our attention up so let's look up into the canopy and what do we notice well we noticed that there's not much going on and that's no surprise because it is late winter spring isn't even here so we don't really expect to find too much activity at least where I live in Western Pennsylvania we do see some leaves hanging on from last year and that feature is called marence but Elms typically aren't a marent group of trees so we don't really expect to use that clue of maresin to help us identify elms what else do we notice when we look around the canopy well what we notice is a lack of something we notice that there are hardly any flowers on trees now you might be saying yeah of course there's no flowers on trees it's so early in the season but we can use that as a clue to help us identify Elms because what's interesting about Elms is that Elms are flowering right now so what we're doing is paying attention to something called phology phology is study of the timing of biological events so when do the wood frogs return to vernal pools to breed when do snow trilliums Bloom when do Eastern feebies return When do American chestnut leaves turn yellow in the fall well when do American in Slippery Elms flower that's phology and if we pay attention to that we can locate Elms and identify Elms much more easily because the thing about these two species of elm is that they are among the first trees to flower in areas where they grow now Elms aren't the only trees that flower so early in the year but they are among I would say less than 10 or so angiosperm trees or flower producing trees that are flowering right now late winter early spring so you could be driving around you could be walking on a trail you could be walking on a ridge looking down into the valley and just look at which trees are flowering and if you see flowers on trees you can narrow down your choices from well over a 100 species depending on where you live to I'd say eight or less tree species and two of those could be American elm and slippery elm so when we look up into the canopy we could see that some trees are flowering now I'll tell you right now that American elm and slippery elm flowers aren't that big and showy but they're there and we could see that they're there even from the forest floor so depending on sunlight depending on condition some of these flowers can look yellowish or golden when the sun's hitting them but when we look more closely we can see that these flowers are shades of red and green and maybe some brown as well now there is a difference between American elm flowers and slippery elm flowers but they do look very similar so American elm flowers are produced in clusters that droop they hang down while the flowers of slippy Elm are more Compact and they're produced in rounded clusters and I like to say they almost look like fireworks EXP FL floting on the tree so which tree is this well this is an Elm this is American elm and when I look up into the canopy I can see that there are flowers on this tree now when I take a look around most of these trees don't have flowers on them no surprise it is late winter spring is not even here yet however some of the trees do have flowers on them and these trees aren't Elms so I mentioned a couple times that Elms aren't the only trees that are flowering right now now so what other trees are flowering at the same time that Elms are flowering we need to know this information so that we can positively identify Elms and not confuse them for other trees that are out here so other trees that are flowering right now at least where I live include red maple silver maple Quaking Aspen and Big Tooth Aspen those are the primary contenders yes there might be some other trees that are starting to Bud there are some other trees that are non-native that might be flowering some ornamental trees there are some shrubs that are starting to flower but in areas where you might find an Elm those are the other trees that you need to consider red maple silver maple Big Tooth Aspen Quaking Aspen now when you look at the flowers of Aspens you will see that they look very different from the flowers of elm so the flowers of Aspens are produced in pendulous catkins that are quite long and also fuzzy or hairy now the flowers of Red Maple and silver maple they look like one another and from a distance the flowers of Red Maple and silver over maple kind of look like the flowers of American elm and slippery elm when you look at them up close you will see that they are very different so how do you tell the difference between Maples and Elms from a distance we'll look at the branching Arrangement because the branching arrangement of Maples is opposite while the branching arrangement of Elms is alternate now of course we can also look at bark pattern as well but the thing is red maple bark can look similar to elm bark so as a red maple matures it kind of looks like this American an elmark right here but if you look higher up the trunk of a red maple you will see that it's much smoother it's almost American Beach like and a younger red maple is very smooth and beach-like as well now because Elms are among the first trees to flower they're also among the first trees to produce fruits and these fruits can appear on a particular tree 2 weeks after a tree flowers so it happens really quickly and from a distance it can be kind of difficult to see what these fruits look like but if you look more closely you will see that the fruits are these rounded Samara structures the fruits of American elm typically have hairs around the margins of the fruits while the fruits of slippery elm typically lack these hairs or only have a few scattered hairs around the margins of the Samaras now it's important to keep in mind that when Elms are flowering that's not necessarily the time to be looking for morel mushrooms at least where I live now yes some people are starting to find morels in the county in which I live but Peak morel season is still few weeks away so when Elms are flowering then they fruit a few weeks after that I start looking for Morel when these leaves are starting to appear on the trees but the point of paying attention to phology is just to help you locate and identify and scout out areas where Elms are growing so that you can come back in a few weeks and hopefully find the morals that are associated with these trees now having said everything that I said if you find an Elm that's got lots of flowers on it it might not be an ideal tree that will be associated with with lots of morel mushroom fruiting bodies because morels associate with dead and dying Elms and of course a dead tree won't be able to produce any flowers or fruits however you can still use this information to find out where Elms are growing because if you're finding one Elm there's a good chance that there are more Elms nearby so if you're walking in an area and you look up and you see trees that are flowering and you can identify those trees as Elms they look like they're healthy Elms well take a look around because you're probably going to find a few dead Elms here and there or dying Elms Elms that aren't doing so well those are the trees that you want to come back to when the temperature warms up a bit and you hit Peak morel mushroom season now of course there are a few more features we could look at to help us positively identify Elms we're not going to go over them in this video because the point of this video is to get you to pay attention to something that field guides don't really get you to pay attention to and that is phology when are certain things happening when we look at a hardwood forest this time of year we gaze upwards and we look up into the canopy we see that not much is going on but something is going on if we pay attention more closely we see that certain trees are flowering late winter through early spring these are the first trees to flower and among the first trees to flower include Elms both American elm and slippery elm if we want to improve our tree identification skills pay attention to phology if we want to find morel mushrooms in a few weeks after these trees flower and fruit pay attention to phology thank thank you so much for watching this video I truly appreciate it hope you enjoyed it hope you learned something if you want to support this Channel please subscribe to the learn your land YouTube channel and head on over to learny your land.com and sign up for the email newsletter so that we can stay in touch thank you again for watching I will see you on the next [Music] video [Music]

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 171,067

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Id: YYqKNnB3cyc

Length: 9min 33sec (573 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2024