I have not been very active with my satellite hobby this summer - which is usual. Thought I would just drop by and chat about my other projects.
Ordered and received 20 American Elm trees this week. These are Princeton Elm trees and they are a cultivar of the original American Elm that is resistant to DED (Dutch Elm Disease). The National Arboretum went out into communities and found all the Elm trees that did not succomb to DED. They then grafted prunings from these trees and grew them to a semi-mature status and purposely injected them with the DED fungus.
The DED fungus is carried by the Elm boring beetle. The beetle is a small insect that borrows through the tree bark and makes tunnels in the outer wood of the tree (in the cambium/phloem and outer sapwood layers). The beetles carry a fungus under their wings and as they burrow through the tree, the fungus finds a new, more habital home to live in the tree itself. The fungus grows in the "viens" of the tree like cholesterol in the human blood vessels and restricts the exchange of water and nutrients between the roots and the leaves of the tree. This eventually kills the tree.
After injecting the cultivars of a surviving Elm tree with the fungus, if that tree does not succomb to DED, then you may repropigate the cultivars from that tree and replant them without or with much less fear that they will ever get DED.
The DED is named Ducth Elm Disease because it was a Dutch botanist or research group that discovered what the fungus actually was. The fungus originated in China and the European Elm Beetle carried the fungus to Siberian Elm trees. These Elm trees are normally resistant to it. The fungus spread over Europe and started infecting other species of Elms that could not handle the fungus as well or at all.
In the 1920's through the 30's, American furniture manufacturer's were buying Elm wood from France. The fungus was in that wood and when the logs were transported to America, the American Elm beetle picked up the fungus because it burrowed into the logs from Fance. The American Elm beetle then began to spread that fungus to all the American Elm trees in the US starting in the Indiana and Ohio areas (roughly).
The American Elm (Ulmus americana) had no resistance to this fungus. By the 1970's, almost the entire population of American Elms in the US had been dessimated, except for a few here and there. Those surviving American Elms had some built-in genetic resistance to the DED. Botanists have been researching this phenomenon for decades and have developed cultivars from the surviving trees to re-establish the population.
Some of the top cultivars are the Princeton, Prairie Expedition, Jefferson and New Harmony Elm varieties. I ordered 20 Princeton Elms and am growing them now.
RADAR
Ordered and received 20 American Elm trees this week. These are Princeton Elm trees and they are a cultivar of the original American Elm that is resistant to DED (Dutch Elm Disease). The National Arboretum went out into communities and found all the Elm trees that did not succomb to DED. They then grafted prunings from these trees and grew them to a semi-mature status and purposely injected them with the DED fungus.
The DED fungus is carried by the Elm boring beetle. The beetle is a small insect that borrows through the tree bark and makes tunnels in the outer wood of the tree (in the cambium/phloem and outer sapwood layers). The beetles carry a fungus under their wings and as they burrow through the tree, the fungus finds a new, more habital home to live in the tree itself. The fungus grows in the "viens" of the tree like cholesterol in the human blood vessels and restricts the exchange of water and nutrients between the roots and the leaves of the tree. This eventually kills the tree.
After injecting the cultivars of a surviving Elm tree with the fungus, if that tree does not succomb to DED, then you may repropigate the cultivars from that tree and replant them without or with much less fear that they will ever get DED.
The DED is named Ducth Elm Disease because it was a Dutch botanist or research group that discovered what the fungus actually was. The fungus originated in China and the European Elm Beetle carried the fungus to Siberian Elm trees. These Elm trees are normally resistant to it. The fungus spread over Europe and started infecting other species of Elms that could not handle the fungus as well or at all.
In the 1920's through the 30's, American furniture manufacturer's were buying Elm wood from France. The fungus was in that wood and when the logs were transported to America, the American Elm beetle picked up the fungus because it burrowed into the logs from Fance. The American Elm beetle then began to spread that fungus to all the American Elm trees in the US starting in the Indiana and Ohio areas (roughly).
The American Elm (Ulmus americana) had no resistance to this fungus. By the 1970's, almost the entire population of American Elms in the US had been dessimated, except for a few here and there. Those surviving American Elms had some built-in genetic resistance to the DED. Botanists have been researching this phenomenon for decades and have developed cultivars from the surviving trees to re-establish the population.
Some of the top cultivars are the Princeton, Prairie Expedition, Jefferson and New Harmony Elm varieties. I ordered 20 Princeton Elms and am growing them now.
RADAR
