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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-160
Siberian Elm
Ulmus pumila
Siberian Elm grows fast into a tough, wind-pollinated tree that shrugs off heat, alkaline soil and drought once established, though its wood is weak and individual stems are short-lived. Left to grow and flower, one tree scatters wind-borne seed with high germination onto any open ground nearby each spring; cut back to the stump on an annual or biennial cycle instead, it never flowers or seeds at all, and produces goat and cattle browse, tough coppice wood, edible young leaves and inner bark, and medicinal bark poultices. It fixes no nitrogen and offers nothing to pollinators, since a coppiced tree never flowers in the first place.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 4–9
- Soil
- Sand · Silt · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 5.5–8
- Plant type
- Deciduous Tree
- Mature height
- 50–70 ft
- Mature spread
- 35–50 ft
- Plant spacing
- 24–60 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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